


Fangs Too Long

by KriegsaffeNo9



Category: Little Witch Academia
Genre: Accidental Drug Use, Angst, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Anxious Diana, Bachelor Auction, Bad Parenting, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Dick measuring contest, Embarrassment, Evil Hannah And Barbara(tm), F/F, Gen, Movie Night, Multi, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Harm, Sex Talk, Slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-03-05 15:41:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 48,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13390959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KriegsaffeNo9/pseuds/KriegsaffeNo9
Summary: Luna Nova arranges a bachelor auction to slake the unthinkable desires of their students.  Meanwhile, in the A-plot, Diana struggles with anxiety, ultimately making a rash decision.Crackfic, maybe?  It does get very aggressively weird.The real title will be revealed in chapter 2, as it may be construed as a spoiler.Things get a bit explicit in chapter 6.





	1. Sinner and a Movie

"I have weird thoughts. Like sometimes I want to go sleep in the woods or in the basement of an abandoned house during the day and only come out at night and be, like, a monster and, like, beautiful." -- Lori M., "Night in the Woods"

Right before Akko and co.'s lunch, Headmistress Holbrooke announced something over the speaker-gargoyles looming ominously throughout Luna Nova: "Attention, students, owing to events which have transpired due to circumstances beyond our control but which are certainly within our control now that they've happened, this will be the last class period for today. Please enjoy your lunch and have a nice day. Faculty: this is a Code Starlin. Prepare accordingly."

Akko's eyes glimmered and stayed glimmering 'til Thaumatoastronomy ended, the teacher sprinting through the door ahead of everyone else with a broom in one hand and a gigantic revolver hidden in her desk in the other. Akko was next out of the door, practically skipping. "Half-day!" she said.

"Wonder who's dying," Sucy said, sliding along after her.

"I don't care! I mean I hope they're alright but it's a half-day! We gotta do something!" Akko fidgeted. "Does anybody have an idea? I'm drawin' a blank."

Lotte jogged somewhere between the two. "Sal March usually has something going on! I'll see what they're up to while we're at lunch."

"You do that," Sucy said. "Better be good."

"Sal who?" Akko said.

"The Texas witch," Sucy said. "Sits next to the deep one every class they're in."

"I met them in Marriage Club!" Lotte said. She kissed her plain green wedding band.

"Ah. What's that I feel? The clutching hand of doom around my heart? How I've missed you."

* * *

"Diana Cavendish -- Conceived 20-9-2000 (between ISS missions leading up to its habitation; every human being alive is on Earth). Ritual invoking Shub-Niggurath in Her aspect as Goddess of Life "to honor and preserve all those which live on Earth." Mother: Bernadette Cavendish. Father: Unrecorded."

Diana read the paragraph again and again, 'til she could see it when she closed her eyes, and finally shut the ancient leather-bound ledger. Blessedly, Akko knocked on her door. She knew as there was nobody else in her life who would rap that many times while also shouting.

"Hey, Diana! Sal March is showin' a scary movie in a theater kinda thing! Wanna join in?"

After a moment to try and summon a smile, Diana lay the ledger on the desk and answered the door. "You're going, I presume?"

"You better believe it." She shot finger-guns at her.

"Then I'd love to go." She gave Akko a little peck. "What movie, if I may ask?"

"That IT movie with the space clown! The big screen version of that one movie Cons showed that one time!"

"Ah. Not my first choice, I confess, but I'd like to get my head off of things anyway." She closed the door behind her and followed Akko, not noticing that she'd let go of the handle a little too soon and the heavy door had just a pinch too little momentum to close itself. After a few moments, with Akko chatting away, Diana didn't hear it softly glide open, just a little bit.

* * *

"Show me whose ass we need to kick!" Finnelan said, pumping a shotgun and firing it into the ceiling, knocking off a chunk of tile and hitting herself in the hat. (Reason no. 28 for the big pointy hats.)

"It's not a Code Starlin," Chariot said. Her and Holbrooke were standing by Holbrooke's desk, the big red switch labeled IN CASE OF APOCALYPSE blessedly un-pulled. "We just needed something that would get you all here without alarming the students."

Holbrooke cleared her throat and said, "There's no getting around it. With the boys from Joseph Crowley being intercepted at Christmas, there's not been enough masculine stimulation for the girls of this school."

A general susurrus of agreement rose among the gathered teachers, who had been alternately relieved and disappointed to find that the eschaton had not immanentized.

"Remind me," a fresh-faced teacher said. "What's so wrong with not having witchboys over? This is a girl's school. Surely we don't want to encourage untoward mingling."

"People thought we were mingling untoward...ly... with the Devil for millenia, kid," Finnelan said, taking that exact moment to light a blunt because it would look cool.

"Historically speaking," the stout-jawed, gray-haired history teacher said, "the longer a witch goes sexually unfulfilled the more likely she is to honor He Who Is Not To Be Named, and consequentially start making things extremely complicated. For instance, there was the quite infamous Gonad Implosion Plague of 1903--"

"--and really, a little co-ed mingling is nothing," Finnelan said, raising her voice to try and beat the history teacher's attempt at educating everyone on the finer details of the GIPper. "It's more fair for everyone, really. The straight kids get to gush over some handsome boys, the lesbians don't have to go through bullshit schoolgirl-lesbian copout excuses, the switch hitters can... well, do whatever the hell they like as normal, I guess."

"That said!" Chariot said, stepping forward. "I have a plan for how to best conceal this affair without it being obvious that we're doing it for the relief of our students' sexual hangups. How many of you fine ladies have heard of a bachelor auction?"

"Yes, we've seen _Batman and Robin_ ," the yellow-green-haired white magic teacher said. She accepted a fistbump from the bird-language teacher. No-name teachers represent.

Chariot unfolded an easel with a whiteboard, an elaborate plan drawn onto it along with a few chibi Shiny Chariots which she just liked to doodle. "Good. Then this simple plan I've arranged will get some handsome young men onto Luna Nova grounds, some extra money in the bank, and some volunteer work from our students!"

"Atta girl!" Lukic said. "The going gets rough, you call on the male whores!"

"These are not 'male whores,'" Chariot said. "At best, it's compensated dating. Er, at worst, I mean."

"Oh, I'm not judging," Lukic said. "It's not like we don't call up some nice young men from Blytonbury when we have a little extra cash. Like from this bachelor auction plan of yours!"

"We're not paying for actual male whores with the money we raise selling dates with eligible bachelors!"

"Wait, wait!" a blue-haired witch said. "Headmistress Holbrooke, did you give Ms. du Nord my job?!"

"No, I did not," Holbrooke said.

"Oh thank the gods. So she can't make me not spend the money on whores."

"No, she cannot," Holbrooke said, "though she is entitled to--"

The conversation was derailed entirely and would not get back on track for hours yet.

* * *

The sky was thick with gray clouds, darkening on the horizon. Now and then lightning struck the forest, so far away the sound died to nothing before it reached home. Jasminka stood at the small podium she'd set on the grass and addressed her congregation.

"It is said that a man's life is 36 possums long. The first one teaches you; the second one you teach; the third through eighth you work; the eighth through fifteenth you put through college no matter how bad you have to break your back to pay their way; the sixteenth through twentieth, sometimes the fifteenth too, you watch sort of flop around doing whatever; the twentieth is the Party Possum; the twenty-first is Party Possum 2: The Next Day; the twenty-second is the The Hangover Possum; the twenty-third through twenty-eighth you mistake for your own children and sew little outfits for; the twenty-ninth through thirty-second, the action possums; the thirty-third through thirty-fifth, the night possums; and at last there is the thirty-sixth, the winter possum, the one that lives to have their babies on your lonesome grave. This is purely a metaphor of course; I myself like to keep several dozen possums on me, in part for safekeeping, and in part because they won't stop making more, which I appreciate."

She gestured to the line of twenty small holes and matching tiny coffins. "Today we inter Death's most recent and pointlessly cruel harvesting of my magical pets. I don't know why possums only live two years, but I hope whatever god is responsible for that blunder is ashamed of themselves. Today, we say goodbye to Nibbles, Sassy, Aqua Velva, Ripple, Doctor Kisses..."

"Jazzy, who are you-- _Jesus Christ_!" Amanda said as she rounded the bend. The Luna Nova lawn was covered in fuzzy, gray-furred, white-faced rats the size of cats. In a wave, they all stared at her with beady, black, deeply concerned eyes, opened their long toothy snouts, and hissed in chorus. They sounded like people imitating an animal hissing. How? How was that a thing a non-human could sound like?

Amanda aimed her wand.

"Wait, wait!" Jasminka said, jumping in front of her. "Please don't, I love them so much!"

"Are these the lil' bastards making that, that chewing noise all night?" Amanda said, trying to get her wand around Jasminka. "You told me that was your brother's ghost!"

"They are, in a spiritual sense! Please--" She wrestled for Amanda's wand. "I just had to bury ten of them, I'm not sure I can bury any more and keep my sanity." She pouted and sniffled.

"I--look, I don't know to put this other than 'those things scare the piss out of me' and I--do any of the teachers know you have this many of those things?"

"Not strictly, no. But they're well-behaved. I'll... I'll finish the burial, then I'll hold the rest of the ceremony in our room."

"Alright, okay. Just tell me when you're done because last thing I need is--wait, I'm gonna need to get my stuff out of the room first 'cause I don't want monster germs on my undies."

"They're not monsters and they don't have germs," Jasminka said. "Look at them! They're very..."

The lawn was bereft of possum. On one of the turrets halfway across the lawn, a hairless gray tail vanished into a window like a kid slurping up the last bit of spaghetti.

Jasminka and Amanda looked at each other.

"I. Ain't. Seen. Nothin'," Amanda said, waving her hand in front of her face. "Do what you gotta do. I'm outie."

"Yes, m'am," Jazzy said. She returned to the podium, sighed at the empty field where her friends had all vacated, picked up her shovel, and set about laying her ten friends to their final rest.

* * *

Sal's movie room could've held a couple dozen witches comfortably and had chairs for that many, the far wall from the door having a well-stocked snack table and selection of soft drinks. Sal March, seated by the projector and hard at work on the phone before Diana and Akko stepped in, was a chubby, brown-haired witch with a short haircut and a collection of nerdy buttons on their vest.

The mystery of their gender lasted almost ten seconds after he vaulted over the rows of chairs and shook his guests' hands, whereupon he explained in a single long breath that he was a guy using an illusion bracelet to give the impression of being female, owing to an accident of paperwork landing him a scholarship to Luna Nova instead of the Joseph Crowley School for Witchish Boys. (As in Joseph Crowley, the seventh, witchcraft-capable son of Aleister Crowley, not the congressman.) "So, uh, keep that on the down-low? The teachers want me to be on the down-low about it."

"Okay," Diana said.

"Just had to get that out," Sal said.

"This floor's sticky," Akko said, squeaking her shoes on a patch of floor that was lightly gummy. The noise pleased her.

"Oh yeah. I was gonna like sponsor a day trip out to the second-run theater in Glastonbury, but the weather kinda sucks and I needed somethin' to do, you know? So I converted this disused orgone chamber into an imitation scary-ass movie theater!"

He gestured at the cheap, musty-looking curtains along the walls, the less-comfortable chairs, the yellowed sodium lights in the ceiling, the movie projector metamorfied into the form of an old-school reel-to-reel, the muted sound of creepy music ostensibly echoing from neighboring theaters. It was the very picture of extra.

"The orgone chamber, huh?" Diana said, looking through her seat. "A good choice to show a horror movie. You know what happened in here, yes?"

"Oh yes," Sal lied. "No better place for this. I see you brought your own snacks!"

"You did say BYOB," Diana said, "and if I'm going to be blunt I never was one for movie theater faire." She lifted her charcuterie board and bottle of Piper-Heidsieck Cuvée Brut.

"It's cool," Sal lied. "Have a good time."

"Ooh, this air popper lets you melt the butter while you're popping the corn!" Akko said, turning on the air popper on the snack table and watching the magic.

Lotte and Sucy arrived soon, settling in at the front row of chairs. An exceptionally hesitant Cons crept in not long after, behind an exhausted-looking and irritated Amanda. "This better be a good one, I got a lot on my plate."

"You better believe it," Sal said. "Try the queso! Family recipe!"

"I heard 'queso,'" Amanda said. Against her better judgment Constanze helped herself to a healthy mix of popcorn and M&Ms.

When it became apparent nobody else was coming Sal dimmed the lights and started the movie.

* * *

"So," Sucy said when the lights came back on, "the clown's kind of a hottie, isn't he?"

Constanze threw a handful of popcorn and M&Ms at her. Sucy caught a few in her mouth and chewed away, finding the taste combination suddenly quite compelling. Cons lifted her snack bowl over her head and headed over to Amanda, huddling next to her and nervously downing her food after letting it lie uneaten since the fourth minute of the film. She had made the most and loudest noises throughout the film, defying expectation for everyone but Akko, who had seen how she was like when she aired the miniseries.

"How could you be in to a kid-eating space clown?" Akko said. "He's a clown from space that eats kids and turns into scary painting women!"

"What can I say," Sucy purred, "I likes me a bad boy. You like bad boys, don't you, Lotte?"

"Perish the thought!" Lotte said.

"Oh, don't you give me that. Your favorite literary heartbreaker is a werewolf who can't stop imprinting on people."

"He's a werewolf, sure, but he's no evil sewer clown!" Lotte said, shaking her head. "He's been the bad guy sometimes and he's bitten a kid or two, but only in self defense! And he's a gentleman's gentleman when it's not a full moon. And when it is a full moon..." She put a hand on her heart. "He's so... passionate. And he doesn't have anywhere near as many teeth."

"Speaking of passion and teeth," Amanda said, "that whole orgy scene was kinna unnecessary, wasn't it? I mean, one, the big showstopping musical number happens, then the actors are all switched with a bunch of grownups when they talk about doing some kinda sex thing to bond together, and it's like thirty minutes long and then we go back to the kids and I kinda lost track of what Bev was talking about...?"

"The director's cut is a strange beast indeed," Sal said.

"That was pretty neat too," Sucy said, "but then, I'm biased."

"I'm just glad I was done eating when we got there," Diana said, smiling. "Did you like the movie, Akko?"

"Oh, hell yeah!" Akko said. "Beverly was hot and she hit things hard. And the monsters, ooh boy!"

"No kidding," Amanda said, checking her watch. "I think Cons took it a little hard." Constanze made a soft noise and nodded at high speed. "I'm gonna... check to see if our room is ready. And then I'll take her up and we'll watch Forgotten Weapons on YouTube 'til she's not scared. Bullet Jesus makes a Cons all happy, don't he?" She gave Constanze a loving noogie, which under the circumstances she accepted. "'Tween you and me? She's scared to death of clowns even when they don't do the face thing."

Before Diana could change the subject, Sal said, "I do have YouTube on this device! Should I do some video aftercare? Maybe get some more drinks?"

Cons nodded, Amanda seconded it, and Sal provided. In moments a benign, ponytailed gentleman was giving a rundown on submachine gun terminology. After a few minutes, Constanze sighed and melted into Amanda's arms; Sal slipped her a Ramune and took a seat next to the two. Diana realized the window for questions had closed and said, "It's been pleasant. We'll see you later."

"Adios," Sucy said, tucking a few more Abba-Zabas and a 2-liter of Sprite down her dress in as discrete a fashion as she cared. The team left.

"That was fun, Lotte!" Akko said, cuddling up to Diana. "Thanks for inviting us. And I'm sure Diana had a good time too."

"I'm not overly fond of horror movies," Diana said, "but the acting was good and the script was witty. I'll give it that."

"The night is young," Sucy said. The director's cut was only four and a half hours long and they'd started at noon; the sun had only just set. "We wanna have an adventure of some kind, round out the half-day?"

"Hmm...!" Lotte said, tapping her chin. "I could go for an adventure."

"Not too heavy a one," Diana said. "It's either going to rain or snow in a moment and it's going to be a mess either way."

"Indoor adventure it is," Sucy said.

* * *

Profs. Finnelan and Badcock walked toward the teachers' dormitory.

"Good thing Chariot jumped on that letter-writing grenade," Samantha said.

"Now if only--" Finnelan said, tripping over a gray monster and landing flat on her face. "fpuh!" she said. The monster she tripped over fell on its side, eyes falling half-lidded. It began to stink something fierce.

"Mother Mormo, what is that?" Badcock said, giving the beast a wide berth.

Finny got into a seated position and analyzed the creature. "Hrrm. Looks like a possum. An American one, not an Australian one." She waved her wand over it and an HP bar appeared, showing one shock damage from the trip and one clean health box. "Playing dead, as a possum would."

"It's a gruesome little thing," Badcock said. "We should tell the fairies to..."

A goblin ran past the two of them, wildly swinging his broom behind him as he was chased through the hall by another, larger possum. "Titania's tits, someone help me!" he said.

"Good luck," Finnelan said.

Badcock stepped around the possum and left it to its fate. "Come on," Badcock said. "Let's smoke a little weed and forget about this place's awful security."

"Hah. Good thing we're all badasses," Finnelan said.

"Word," Badcock said, holding out her fist, Finny reciprocating. Named teachers represent.

No sooner did they leave the hallway did a dozen possums crawl out of lockers and ventilation to bumble around doing possumy things.

* * *

The indoor adventure, alas, turned out to be a trip to the library. The librarians had answered the call and were apparently still answering it, so anarchy reigned and snacks were thus permitted. Akko dragged, with her hands, like an idiot, a chair from the reference texts down two stories to the appendix-like children's reading room; Sucy lay on the ground, curled up around her two-liter of Sprite and pile of Abba-Zabas; and Lotte, the game master of this particular adventure, sat on the high reading chair, reading from an ancient copy of Stephen King's IT with crinkly plastic library binding holding its dust jacket in place.

"'The terror,'" Lotte read, affecting her most dramatic tone, "'which would not end for twenty-eight years--if it ever did end--began, so far as I know or can tell, with a sickass guitar solo at high noon.'"

Akko crunched her popcorn with deliberate loudness. "Sounds accurate so far!"

"Shush," Sucy said, tugging the Abba-Zaba in her mouth away with deliberate slowness, stretching the taffy so thin the peanut butter core began to show as a discoloration in the bar.

Diana was part of the circle, seated on a comfy chair next to a small endtable. She had, on a whim, taken a book for herself and set to reading it. It was titled _Fanged Lovers: The Romantic Monster in Fiction and Reality_. She'd been meaning to read it for a while. She browsed through at a brisk pace, her expression waning the further along she went. As Lotte reached the climax of the first chapter, Diana reached a passage that made her eyes linger.

"The romantic monster is a product of fantasy, and a healthy fantasy life is to be commended. But an inability to discern fantasy from reality, or a willful spurning of reality, can lead to tragedy. Far be it from the author to dissuade an interspecies or interreality pairing, but above all else, may there be due caution. A vampire in the grips of lust is at war with the Beast raving for blood. A werewolf in passion--"

\--she thought of Lotte and her absent wife--

"--may lose control of their abhuman strength. An insufficiently lubricated zombie--"

Okay, her eyes didn't linger on that sentence.

"Humans are durable. Humans are fragile. So too are the sophonts they fall in love with. Caution must be exercised above all else. And, tragically, there are lives, existences, that cannot share in the physical act of love. For a select few, and here my pen hesitates, even the emotional act of love should not be considered.

"We begin with the least-likely entities to cross a human being's path: the children of the gods. Chief in number of these precious few are the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath."

Who was your father, Diana?

Assumption triggered through atavistic response.

First stability. Then metastasis.

The miracle of the flesh.

"'--and there it passes out of this tale forever,'" Lotte said, voice lilting. "End... of chapter one." She closed the book. Proportonately, she may as well not have gotten past the title page.

"Is Georgie gonna be okay?!" Akko said, teary-eyed.

"Sure," Sucy said.

"Oh, thank God!" she said, hugging her, to her intense displeasure.

"You're a fine reader, Lotte," Diana said, trying to think about everything except herself and the book. She tossed it onto the little table and it slipped past and fell and crashed onto the ground.

"Thank you kindly," Lotte said. "My daddy loves to tell scary stories, I guess I picked it up from him!"

"I think... excuse me." Diana wiped her brow, suddenly and inexplicably sweaty. "I think I took it harder than I expected."

"Oh, Diana? Are you gonna be alright?" Akko said. "Want me to walk you--"

"I'll be fine," Diana lied, smiling beautifully. "You try not to have any nightmares, alright, lovely?" She knelt, kissing Akko, and left, walking exactly as fast as she needed to and no faster. The air in the library was bereft of oxygen. She was suffocating.

 _The magic fades and there's no air. Your reward is death on the edge of space. Goodnight, Diana, and die afraid_.

She managed to keep from crying until she was out in the dark, where no one could see her, and the only sound was the moaning night wind and the soft hissing of voices in the darkness. Look at you, running away...

* * *

Akko flicked three euro coins in the air; they spun and glinted and missed the counter completely.

"I ain't pickin' that up," the lady at the counter said.

"Sorry, that was cooler in my head," Akko said, leaning to pick them up and hand them to the library cafe lady. She picked up her little bag of soft cookies and waved. "See you!"

"Sure will," the lady said.

Sucy was checking her phone. "Hey, looks like the faculty's throwing a student bachelor auction tomorrow. Students auction volunteer hours to score with a hot dude, parents or sponsors auction to get them dates at neater places. Funds benefit the school. So they say."

"Neat!" Lotte said.

"Think you wanna try it out? Your wifey said it's cool to date around, right?"

"Well... I'll think about it."

"I know I'm callin' up Wangari. Gonna pool our funds, maybe trick some people from Blytonbury or Glastonbury into funding us a nice date spot..." She scrolled down. "Wait. Wait a goddamn minute."

"Hm?" Akko said, in the midst of admiring the cookies she got for Diana.

"It says here: 'Sucy Manbavaran and Wangari [surname withheld] are forbidden from participating. You know why.'" She stuffed her phone in her pocket, grabbed the school newspaper off a stand, and crumpled it in effigy. "I know why and I'm pissed. Who wants to help me and Wan-Wan get a date and then get laid?"

"If a Diana Adventure doesn't happen," Akko said.

"Whatever makes you happy," she grumbled. "I'll see you at the room."

"Yeah," Akko said. "I might be late."

"Give 'er a good clitting, or whatever it is you gay girls do," Sucy said, waving.

* * *

Diana's rush to her room enjoyed an interruption.

"Oh, Diana!" Hannah said. "It's so good to see you! What's going on?"

"Not now, please," she said, voice firm.

"But we need you to--" Barbara held up a jar of candied pears. "Wait. Diana, have you been crying?"

Diana's eyes were puffy and red, her cheeks flush and wet. "No," she said. "It's starting to rain outside." It was, daggerlike beads of rain at that, so the lie was nearly three-quarters assed.

"You might need to warm up," Hannah said, unbuttoning her vest. "Let me help you."

"Fuck you you're gonna help her!" Barbara said, raising the jar and preparing to smash it into Hannah's temple.

"Please," Diana said, grabbing their arms and stopping them as surely as if she'd flipped an off switch. "I don't need this right now. I just want a quiet evening alone and I don't need you... I don't need either of you." She shoved them aside and walked between them.

"She touched me," Barbara said, nearly fainting.

"Fuck you, she touched me first," Hannah said, reaching for a knife.

"Fuck you!" Barbara said, resuming her attack. The two struggled in the hall as Diana sped back to her room.

She pushed through the door, not noticing it was ajar, stumbled past the family ledger, and the tears flowed, her sobs choked and terrified. She slumped onto a fainting couch, lacking the strength to get to her bed, and curled up and let the thoughts overwhelm her.

How ashamed Akko would be to see her lying there, sobbing. What would she say? _"Diana, I can't believe you'd just run away from me! Why would you just lie here crying like a little pussy? Huh? I can't believe I ever thought you were strong and brave. Whatever, I'm outie."_ And she'd be alone and there would be nothing.

What would her mother say?

What would her father?

Her father, whatever he may have been. Was he behind the nightmares? Had he been something other than human? A monster, an avatar of a god, a fundamental force that could only be invoked through the sorceries her mother could command? The nightmares had to come from somewhere. That perpetual sensation of otherness. The words of Daughter Mormo at Her invocation...

"May you live through dark days."

What was she? _Besides a coward who asked everything but the question she needed answered._

She wasn't alone.

She was not alone.

She opened her eyes, and bore witness to her visitor.

* * *

Akko's walk to Diana's room was interrupted by Hannah and Barbara.

"Do you know if it's fatal to get stabbed in the kidney?" Barbara said.

"You have two, you'll be fine if it's just one, so it's cool if we duel to the first kidney that dies, right?" Hannah said.

"Sucy once told me that if I didn't have both kidneys I'd probably be dead from at least a couple of her potions," Akko said, "so you wanna have as many in you as you can manage. So in my professional opinion I think you shouldn't put your kidneys on the line. How about deescalating the conflict to something more constructive?" Now she was just quoting from the handbook she'd leafed through at the library. "You could try a poetry slam, or an art contest, or a baking contest, or tiddlywinks, or you could go to your local library and read a book!"

"But it's wet and shitty out," Hannah said.

"Then find a book you haven't read yet and read it. Or do your homework."

"Can I have one of those cookies?" Barbara said.

"These are for Diana, they're medicinal."

"They have pot in them?" Hannah said.

"No, they're just, you know, tasty and sweet like she is so she can feel better and less anxious. Can I please walk through?"

Hannah and Barbara spread themselves out to block the hall entirely.

Akko turned herself into a mouse and carried the bag of cookies over her little orange head as she ran between their crisscrossed legs.

"Oh, right," Hannah said. "She's good at that."

Akko de-metamorphied and ran towards Diana's door. She'd lost enough time with the Dorklord Sisters, she had to make it to--

Diana's door was open. Like, not even slightly closed. That wasn't like her, she liked her privacy, especially when she got into one of her moods. She took her wand in hand and stepped through the door, ready to blast the second she saw a shapeshifting clown or gang of bullies. The sound of rain was unusually loud. "Diana?" she said. "Are you alright? Say a codeword if you're alright and not an obvious one."

Nothing... nothing but an open window. And a faint smear of blood on the sill, where a bleeding hand must have touched it.

"Diana?!" Akko shouted into the night, into the glass-like rain. "DI-A-NA-A-A?!"

No answer but distant thunder.

Her heart hammered in her chest. There had to be a logical solution. Diana had to be okay. She just... she just...

"Did you see where she went?" Akko asked the possum in the bathroom.


	2. It's a Beautiful Knife

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The (posted?) namesake of this tale is "If You Have Ghosts." I recommend the cover by Ghost, which inspired the feel of Diana's angsty freakout: watch?v=4kNetd_lISI

Diana opened her eyes, and bore witness to her visitor.

A plump possum with salt-and-pepper fur and a pale gray face looked her in the eye. Just the one, as its eyes were bulging cross-eyed from its head. It licked its nose.

For a moment, the darkness swirling in her brain fled, replaced by an intense curiosity. "What are you doing here?" she said.

The possum didn't answer. Thinking of cats, she reached to take it by the nape. It bit her finger as her hand grew too close. Her body seized and she swore very loudly in her head. Only in her head, of course. The possum let go of her finger and bumbled off the couch and away from her, gunning towards the bathroom where her first-aid kit was.

"Of course," she said, sitting up at last. She cast a simple healing spell on her hand, closing the wound but leaving the smear of blood, and walked towards the window. An idea was forming and she would need the right setup for it. She unlatched the window and raised it up, and in the darkness a different, soaking-wet, frosty-furred possum scuttled away. Ah, fantastic, an infestation. She narrowed her eyes and aimed her wand. "Oh, no you don't." She fired off a stunning spell at the beast.

The spell reflected off the single-charge defense spell Jasminka had cast on the poor beast for safekeeping; in a flash the reflect spell ended and Diana ate her own attack. It felt like she'd been clocked with a cricket bat. Dizzy, she stumbled forward, clamoring through the window in what felt at the moment like a good idea. Halfway out the window she put together that maybe she should have fallen backwards and not forward and tried to do exactly that. Instead she just fell all the way forward and crashed through the roof, which had gone far too long without maintenance, and fell forever.

Ten or so seconds later, Akko stepped through the door to her room, and Diana hit the pile of mattresses.

After a few long moments lying on the mattress waiting for the spell and her ongoing nightmare to end, she realized the rain was landing on her upper body in a copious amount and that was not going to do. She sat up, stumbling into the lightless hole, and remembered yes, she knew a few light spells. "Lumos," she said, and it's a complete coincidence that's also the light spell in Harry Potter. Why, J.K. Rowling probably knew that was the light spell and used it for authenticity in her alternate history where male witches were just as common as females and thus had more numbers to attempt living in their own isolated, whimsically nightmarish world.

Anyway, Lumos turned on and the light revealed an abandoned stage. The mattresses were haphazardly piled for, she guessed, sex purposes, given the discarded condoms and bottles of beer and Buckfast Tonic Wine. She aimed her light, revealing moth-eaten curtains around the stage, rows of decrepit seats. She turned, and beheld a backdrop. The paint was peeling, eaten with mold, depicting perhaps a cityscape seen through enormous windows. Graffiti, years younger and emblazoned over paint and mold, formed a great crimson sign.  
She'd fallen into one of many, many, many disused rooms hidden throughout Luna Nova. The orgone chamber, the ornamental garden, the tennis room, the machine shop Cons took over, Finnelan's fine arts building... and this place. This was the original Performing Arts Building of Selene Talbott.

This was the oldest and least-deserved of Luna Nova's architectural failures. Built in the halcyon days of 1850, the Building served dutifully for a century until 1963 came around. A tragic crossover between the professor of the arts and the Psychonaut Club resulted in the creation of a play, The Nothingness Allusion. Its sole performance was so intense and mystically significant that an avatar of a witchgod emerged at the climax. Exactly which one it was went unrecorded; all that any survivor noted was that it loved the sound of human beings dying in pain. The whole mess was sealed underground in an emergency ritual and thus Luna Nova went half a decade with its performing arts nerds having to perform on the lawn like the dogs they were.

Being the only play performed in the building that year, and lax school regulations meaning the student, faculty, and visitor deaths did not disqualify it, The Nothingness Allusion nonetheless won the PABST Blue Ribbon.

(The beer came first. Let us not forget precious Selene Talbott, the founder of Luna Nova's performing arts department, was a famous lush.)

"By the gods," Diana said, her voice a whisper.

She walked around the pile of mattresses, the floorboards creaking in pain in her passing. The rain and chill and the atmosphere created a miasmic fog that lapped at her calves. She came to a stop below the insignia and stared at it.

The brain-fog of her spell lifted, the lingering disorientation of her fall soon following. What lay behind was a clarity she had not felt for what seemed like years but which had only been a week or two. (But what was time when sleep was touch-and-go at best and every dream turning to heart-stopping nightmare?)

The harsh crimson lines of the symbol were spraypaint. However long they had been down here, the paint seemed glossy and new, like the skin of a car fresh off the assembly line. She almost touched it, but knew that doing so would...

She didn't know what it would do, only that it would be ill-advised. This she felt as surely as she felt the chill of the rain.

"Is this the face of my father?" she said, asking the darkness, which said nothing. "Who made me? Why did nobody ever tell me who my father was? Was he unimportant? He's not unimportant to me. Was he more than human? Then why keep their name a secret? I... I shouldn't have to ask this. I should know. And the people who would know... they're gone. Or I hate them."

The words slipped through her lips with practiced ease as though she still nurtured a loathing for her aunt and cousins, for in her heart she had never really forgiven them, against all sense of goodness her mother had tried to instill in her daughter, against how they had poured their faith into her on that fateful day not long ago, against the mercy she'd shown them. There were parts of her that would've lived to see them turned to living wood and drowned every year. There were parts of her--

\--parts of her that dreamed of killing them in ways she could never vocalize.

She didn't know why, only that she did, and the nightmares, always occasional, had become ceaseless. She hated everything about herself, some days with a dull, distant ache, now with a full-bore wrath that blurred her memories, passing them through a lens of self-loathing. Bumbling, failing upwards through impending apocalypses. Brute-forcing her way into magical skill she idiotically allowed herself to lose. Forgiving the unforgivable out of a softness in her heart.

She fit her hand, the soft part where the thumb connected, into her mouth, and bit until she tasted blood, teeth slipping off tender bones and soft tendons and sinking into the flesh. She winced, the pain intense, bracing, and she spit her blood out onto the dry-rotted floorboards, flush with shame and pain and cruel satisfaction.

Did her blood disappear, drained into the floorboards? Or was it her imagination, a trick of her pale light and the thickening fog?

Did it matter?

She'd felt it, dreamed it, and for too long she had tried to ignore it.

Let us hold no more pretense of personhood.

Let me cast off my skin and be something impossible.

Let me become a horror.

* * *

Akko actually kicked the door off its hinges. "Jasminka!" she said, "I have a possum!"

Jasminka stirred out of sleep. "Oh, hello!" she said. Cons had padded earphones on; Amanda just slept like a snoring rock at the dreadfully late hour of 8 pm. "What it is, my dude?"  
Akko power-slid on her knees to Jasminka's bedside, bearing the possum aloft. "Do you recognize him? Or her? Or whatever?"

"Why, yes, I do!" Jasminka said, holding out a Peperami stick. The plump possum bit into it and chewed as possums do. "That would be El Gran Mordedor, the one who likes meat most of all. Where did you find him? He wandered off on me..." She checked her alarm clock. "This very afternoon. How is it only eight? We must've partied hardy indeed!"

"It's the weather," Akko said, handing off El Gran Mordedor to Jazzy. "Also, I spent like an hour trying to get the possum to sniff for Diana before I figured I should probably just use magic? Then I realized I don't know any finding spells... then I thought, hey, Jasminka keeps these lil' guys around as pets, maybe she speaks possum."

"I do!" Jazzy said, rubbing Mordeor's tummy. She hissed at him, he hissed at her, the two hissed a bunch while Akko fidgeted.

"Well?" Akko said.

"Ain't seen 'er," she said.

A light went on. "Wait. Ask him if he's seen the most beautiful woman in the world."

A round of questioning. "He does have a crush on Swisher, but that's not Diana."

"Okay, uh, ask for someone by Diana's description, then!"

Another intense round of inquiries. "Oh, he did see a weird blonde girl doing a lot of crying. But she scared him, so he defended himself and went to the bathroom to go to the bathroom. Didn't see what happened to her, and lemme tell you, El Gran Moredor takes his potty-going seriously."

"Aww," Akko said. "But at least I know she was in her room, and then she wasn't in her room, and there was blood..." Ah, right, that was panic she was feeling. "Oh my God Jasminka, Diana may have just been blood-kidnapped! Bloodnapped! We gotta save her or she'll die, probably!"

"Huh," Jasminka said, taking a bite from the Peperami stick (she preferred sweet or salty to savory, but let it not be said she would turn down savory). "So would you say this is gonna be an outdoor adventure, or..."

"Diana was in one of her Moods, and the last time she was this in one of her Moods she had a panic attack and thought she couldn't breathe! We gotta save her or it's lights out for America!"

"Hrrm..." She consulted with her possum.

Akko picked him up, getting bitten in the process, and held him over her head. "If you don't help me save Diana from her hostage situation, I'm gonna hostage situfy this skull monster."

"Don't you dare!" Jasminka said, aghast.

"I dare because I care," Akko said, jaw firm, a radiant aura of heroism surrounding her. "The Tick said that, and now I'm saying it."

Jasminka sighed. "Okay, let me dress up warm. And get you some Possum Fever antidote."

"Some what now?"

"Possum Fever! Possums carry it through their magical love-nibbles. Very magic-resistant. Causes fevers, delusions of grandeur, hallucinations, blood diarrhea, the works. Better get cured fast before it kicks in!" She flicked a pill from inside her jammies' breast pocket and at Akko's open mouth. Akko caught and swallowed it. "There you go." She downed one herself. "Vigilance is the cost of possum ownership."

"Meet you in the commons room in ten minutes," Akko said, darting out the room to gather her friends. "And bring coffee or something!"

* * *

Wangari heard a knocking at her door and answered it.

"Sucy," she said.

"Wangari," Sucy said. "Topic: dicks."

"They. Are. AMAZING." Wangari squealed in sheer joy and Sucy glided into her room, smiling that big, drowsy smile she got when she was truly in the depths of perversion.

"I know, right?" she said, shutting the door behind her.

Joanna looked down from her bunk, adjusting her glasses. "Should we be worried, boss?"

"Oh, no, we're cool!" Wangari said, flopping onto her bed with Sucy at her side. "We smoothed all that lingering resentment over."

"Oh, boy, did she ever," Sucy said.

"A'ight," Kimberly said, huffing. "Don't come runnin' to me if she starts gettin' all crazy on you and junk." She nibbled on her pen as she pondered the next verse. Maybe "now they write me letters like I'm Biggie?" Would that be acceptable as a shout-out? Or was it too close to the original lyric? Then again, Biggie did paraphrase a preexisting list of rules for drug dealing in Ten Crack Commandments...

Akko kicked in the door. "Wangari! I need your literary powers to--"

"We're busy!" Wangari said. "And it's like starting to get late, man, why are you making so damn much noise?"

"But Diana's been kidnapped!"

Wangari twitched. "Did you say kidnapped?"

"Maybe by her own mental problems but yeah."

Sucy put her hand on Wangari's shoulder. "Wan-Wan, you must have seen that announcement. You know for sure we're not being allowed to take a shot at dicks. It's up to you, babe, are we gonna team up to handle--"

"Yes," Wangari said, already dressing for the outside, "but I'm gonna knock this out right now so I have somethin' juicy for tomorrow's paper. Plus I can roll this into getting me off the ban list!" She bat her dark eyes at Sucy. "Doesn't that sound nice? Killing two birds with one stone?"

"You just had to say 'killing,'" Sucy said. "Alright, alright. But you owe me one, Akko."

"Didn't you save my life in the snow once before?" Akko said. "So technically I owe you one already. But also it's Diana out there so you should be helping anyway because you're one of her friends! ... How's about we say I just owe you three?"

"Well--" Sucy said, and Wangari put a finger on her mouth. Sucy sucked on her finger for perhaps a few moments longer than was necessary to get her point across.

"Right, should have expected that," Wangari said, rubbing her finger on the hem of her coat.

"I'm a goddamn freak," Sucy said with pride.

* * *

The search party met in the commons room. Jasminka was there with a giant uncapped thermos of coffee, the wafting scent rich with chocolate and hazelnut notes. Soon joining her was Akko in the lead, with a yawning Lotte close behind, followed by Wangari and her news crew and Sucy taking drag, finishing doing the buttons on her coat. Amanda was down for the count, and Constanze could not be roused from her Bullet Jesus reverie.

"Okay, let's get this show on the road," Sucy said.

"First," Jasminka said, pouring out a round of coffee for everyone as they gathered around the coffee table in front of the ever-burning chair fire, "a traditional winter concoction my parents would whip up for me and my siblin's on Christmas to get ready for Santa!"

"Hell yeah," Akko said. She took her cup and raised it. "To Diana!" she said.

The rest of the team sounded their approval semi-verbally and downed their drinks in moments, warmth spreading through their bodies.

"Huh," Sucy said. "I tasted some... what's that... passion flower? Valerian, not the movie but the plant?"

"Mm-hm! Herbal stuff, very traditional," Jasminka said.

"This is your parents' recipe, huh?" Sucy said.

"It is. They sent a package of their home-made mix for Christmas!"

"And you're from Russia?"

"Yep!"

"That might explain the phenazepam aftertaste," Sucy said.

"The what?" Akko said, an instant before lowering herself to a seated position, resting her head on the central table, and falling asleep. After a moment she jolted awake. "I'M UP. What's going on?"

Lotte yawned like a sleepy lion. "What's happening to me?" she said. "I feel like Dream of the Endless is...." A yawn. "Trying to drag me down so he can beat me up."

"This is the fast-release stuff, your family springs for the good stuff." Sucy licked the residue from her cup. "You guys have two choices. One, you can lie down and go to sleep."

"And wait for Santa?" Jasminka said, less cheerful than she was a minute ago.

"Yes. Or you can try and stay awake and I'll be your trip sitter. Because you will be doing weird shit, and you will not remember it, and you might die." Sucy groaned. "Boy, I was not in the mood for this tonight."

"I heard a challenge," Wangari said, jumping in place. "Who's with me? The more time we lose, the more lost Diana gets, maybe, I think that's how it works."

"Yeah!" Akko said. "Sucy, be our... what's the word?"

"Trip minder," Sucy said. "More or less, anyway."

"Sucy, mind our trip, 'cause we're gonna save..."

* * *

It was suddenly daylight, and outside, and she had a heavy-duty artist's paintbrush in her hand, and she was Akko, and she was sitting on Chariot's shoulders (score!), and... what had she just painted? She'd painted Diana's name in katakana, her brush dwelling on a simple paint-doodle of her face next to it.

"Are you done?" Chariot said. "Am I safe...?"

"Safe?" Akko said.

"I'm still in danger?!" Chariot said.

"Why would you be in danger? Diana's in danger!" Akko said.

"She is?!" Chariot said.

"Okay, okay, let's clear the air a bit," Akko said. "First of all, what did I tell you and why am I here?"

"You told me that Yibb-Tstll was on the way and if you didn't paint Diana's face ten thousand times we'd be drowned in the Black that is Her blood."

"...who?"

"Yibb-Tstll. Mother of the night-gaunts, goddess of lactation and crude oil and, thus, nipples for baby bottles? Her blood's black and flaky and it makes you a Cronenberg if it doesn't kill you?"

"I don't know any of those things," Akko said, tears welling in her eyes. "How did that phazawhatty make me know all that?"

"I think I should just set you down."

"No, keep me up here, it's making me feel better."

* * *

The search for the missing Diana was briefly interrupted by a search for the missing search team. Wangari was sound asleep on a table surrounded by her sleeping underlings, Lotte was snuggled up in Akko's bed and insisted on Akko and Chariot leaving before she got out of bed, and Jasminka they couldn't find but figured they could sort that out later (surely she couldn't have been kidnapped too?) Last, Akko and Chariot found Sucy tied upside-down under an archway near the front of the school, facing the ground leyline terminal. "Hey there," Sucy said. "Guess where all my blood's at? Hint: not where I like it to be."

"I'll get you down!" Akko said, zapping the rope. Lotte thought to shoot a time dilation bubble at her before she hit the ground, and with teamwork, Wangari conjured a pile of feathers and her options plush padding to cover them. Sucy landed not too heavily.

"Thank you," Sucy said. "And might I say, you're still coordinating really well. You guys had me mind your trip for like five minutes before Akko started shouting that I was made of lizards and, well, one thing led to another." Chariot untied her. "Thank you."

"I think I got, um, some spy tags on us," Joanna said, tugging at an eyeball sticker on her lapel. "You guys wanna see what you did? Maybe you saw Diana and forgot or, you know, whatever."  
"I think this is an amazing idea and I demand we do it immediately," Sucy said.

"Yes!" Akko said. "Who's first?"

The crew gathered under a shady gazebo the staff used to smoke--not tobacco, from the smell of it and the tweaking, possum-covered magical social studies teacher. (Her they just worked around.) Joanna propped her camera on a folding tripod and projected an image on the back wall. "Okay, let's see how this one turns out, the one I got in the camera, I mean."

"Movie night, part two," Sucy said, liberating a hidden Abba-Zaba.

Wangari and her options had spent the night interviewing trees, chairs, and tables, before Wan-Wan gave a passionate speech about lots of things, but mostly dicks and the kinds of things she got up to at Christmas with the lads from St. Joe's. Mercifully, Joanna started fast-forwarding around the time Wangari started demonstrating the positions she'd been put into by climbing on a table she'd been interviewing. A possum watched her, judging and unimpressed.

"No Diana, no Diana, no Diana, mysterious shape that may be Diana..." She pulled out a magic laser pointer and drew a highlight on a nearly-invisible figure in the night. The shitty rain had turned at last into snow at some point, but all it did was cast the long-haired figure into greater doubt. "So, that's one maybe-Diana." She fast-forwarded and found they'd not done much else the rest of the night that wasn't Wangari pretending to bang nearby trees while Joanna stared and Kimberly recorded her thoughts, nor did they maybe-see Diana again.

"Okay, that was a bust," Joanna said, removing an eyeball sticker from the back of the camera. "Who's next?"

From the perspective of Lotte's coat, the team watched Lotte trudge through the halls of Luna Nova mumbling sad songs to herself until she got back to her room. She flopped onto Akko's bed, opened her viewing globe, and commissioned a 60:1 scale plush doll of Aurora from "Beautiful Darkness." She went on to buy several Aurora standees from eBay, paying through the nose for "nigh-instant" delivery, waited for the Aurora standees, signed for the Aurora standees, gently pushed a possum trying to get into the room back out with her broom, then stared at the standees for a while before putting on "Lucifer's Angel" by The Rasmus and performing a striptease. Unmercifully, she flung her coat towards the desk, where it landed in just such a way that the eye sticker recorded every awkward moment. Joanna switched out with a quickness.

"Jesus, we all need to get laid," Kimberly said, jotting that important thought down.

"Maybe," Lotte said, shrinking into herself and blushing.

"Is this just what we all do when we're sufficiently wasted...?" Chariot said. "At least nobody's done any magic rituals they'll regret."

Jo-Jo slotted in Akko's eye sticker.

" _Kazza gorba smotz chorzig glump! Froga! Froga!_ " Akko said, way more naked than strictly necessary and painting Diana's name in katakana across one of the statues of Mormo scattered around school.

"oh no" Chariot said.

Those present looked around and noticed the sheer profusion of Japanese spellings of Diana's name and crude portraits.

"Were you trying to make missing-person posters?" Lotte said.

"Maybe?" Akko said.

Joanna groaned and fast-forwarded. "Come on, gimmie something good to... eat?" she said, stumbling when she came across Akko staring directly at Diana. Gasps all around, or at least from Akko and Chariot.

Diana's form was draped in moldering burgundy curtains held together by a golden clasp, a red symbol painted on it. "Atsuko," she said.

"Di-a-na," Flashback Akko said. "The sign worked?"

"Leave," she said. "I love you, Atsuko. This much warning I'll give you. Stay, and be doomed with the rest of them."

"Di-a-na, you're being..." She struggled with English and lapsed into Japanese. "You're my beautiful wife and I won't leave you alone. I bought you cookies. Let's eat and take a nap."

Without a pause Diana continued in Japanese. "I can't be part of your life anymore, or I'll hurt you."

"That's... that's Twilight talk, Diana!" Akko said. "You're no vampire."

"Am I?" she said, covering her face with a hood and disappearing into the night.

"Wait! Wait, Diana, I wanna..." Akko stumbled through the dark, waving an alit wand, before finding Diana's footsteps ending after a few meters, a possum staring open-mouthed at Akko as she came into view. "Ohhh..." She coughed. "More signs. Gotta be... more signs..."

Joanna checked the rest of the reel. "Well, that was discouraging," she said.

"Alright," Akko said, standing up (for she wound up sitting after a while), "we gotta tell the teachers that they gotta, I dunno, hold off the bachelor auction subplot, 'cause we got a deeply scared Diana to rescue, and she may be a possum."

"What?" Sucy said.

"Jazzy told me that possum fever is a thing! So maybe she got bit by a possum and turned into one. And now any possum could be Diana. Or..." She snapped her fingers. "Maybe the possums are covering for her. What if--"

"Please don't finish that thought," Sucy said.

"But I wanna!" Akko said.

"In all seriousness," Chariot said, "we really should alert the staff that--"

The loudspeakers sounded. "Students of Luna Nova, our eligible bachelors are arriving in five minutes, followed by our highly exclusive special guests who took time out of their busy schedules to attend the auction!"

"...son of a bitch," Chariot said, "I succeeded too hard."

"Too hard to stop..." Akko said, and she completed her sentence.

 **POSSUM QUEEN** _DIANA CAVENDISH_  
in  
WHAT MAY BE DESCRIBED AS A VAGUE PARODY OF "PHANTOM OF THE OPERA" MINUS BEING A PARODY OF "PHANTOM OF THE OPERA." MAYBE THERE'S A PINCH OF "DARKMAN" IN THERE? I DUNNO;  
or,  
THE GANG GETS CLAM-JAMMED

"We're not calling her that," Chariot said.

"What, because it might be true?" Akko said. "We could lock her into a nice and easy gimmick this way."

"Side note," Sucy said, "definitely gonna be getting Lotte laid while we're doing the Diana Thing. It's important."

"But--" Lotte said.

"Lotte." She picked up Lotte's spy eye from the pile and slotted it into Joanna's camera. Lotte's tribute to her absent wife via cardboard accessory played out on the wall. "You told me your wifey didn't want you mooning over her. And you moon her proxies a bunch in just a few minutes of this."

"Alright," Lotte said.

"Yeah, can't argue with that," Akko said.

* * *

Not far away, Diana was watching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Fangs Too Long" works well enough for me, but the urge to call it "Diana Cavendish, Possum Queen" starting out was pretty strong, back when I was gonna go from serious to wacky with no warning.
> 
> Also, I'm not sure if any of this tips the rating into Mature, which it may more concretely depending on how the story unwinds. If you feel the rating needs to be bumped up, I guess indicate that somehow? If it moves you. I should not be posting this at 3 am but eh.


	3. Scare Is My Mind

Someone splashed icy water over Jasminka's head, waking her up. It was almost like being home. "Hello?" she said, after a little sputtering.

"Mornin', whore," Alma said. You know, Alma, the other fat one, with the double chin and the short stature and the brown hair. Alma's room had stark concrete walls and beds which were bare mattresses lain on top of metal frames. Again, it was almost like being home. Jasminka was handcuffed to a chair at a folding poker table she and Alma sat at.

"How are things with you?" Jasminka said. "I was on a hunt for Diana! Or that was the plan, anyway, before the Santa Time Drugs happened. Where am I, again?"

"My room, whore. I made you pah." She threw a decently-sized meat pie onto the table. After a moment she threw a fork just in distance of Jasminka's eatin'-hand.

"Oh, thank you," Jasminka said, giving the pie a sniff. She chewed her first bite slowly. There were hardly any spices, most of it from the excess of salt in the gravy mix used in the filling. Moreover, the taste was familiar. "Is this a possum pie?"

"Yeah, whore. That's one of your stupid pets!" She cackled and revealed a possum head, skin still attached.

Jasminka gasped in horror. "Not Nacho! He was gonna be a roast, not a pie! He's too skinny, you need some fat to melt into a pie!"

Alma stopped laughing. "You were gonna eat that bitch anyway?"

"Well, yeah. I love to hold 'em and pet 'em and eat 'em. Some of my possums are eatin' possums. You could've asked, I could tell you who's best for what."

"I didn't wanna make you dinner, whore, I just wanted to hurt you," Alma said, throwing Nacho's head behind her. "You're the hot fat one. Nobody thinks I'm hot. That ginger bitch Sarah got more pics than I do. That makes me angry!"

"Aw, I'm sorry," Jasminka said, and meant it. "Fat chicks gotta stick together, you know? We gotta swap recipes, and I can teach you some makeup--"

Alma flipped the table. Jasminka screamed and leapt for the pie, chair and all. She grabbed the tin in her teeth and managed to land on her feet near the chunk of airplane debris that served as this room's desk, planting her pie there. "It's alright, Nacho," Jasminka said, "I won't let you go to waste."

"Goddammit," Alma said, leaving. Jasminka continued to lay Nacho to rest in her inimitable fashion.

She finished up Nacho and sat in her chair, looking over shoulder at his discarded head. "I'm sorry, boy," she said. "You deserved a tastier dish. One day, I'll get to her, now that I know she's got a pro--"

The announcement went over the speaker.

"Did somebody say healthy boys?" Jasminka said, instantly wet.

* * *

"Let's split the team," Akko said, dooming everyone the moment they stepped out from the teacher's smoke dungeon.

"I hear that's not something you should do like ever if you can help it," Joanna said.

"Well, we can't! We got a lot on our plate and we gotta share it like it's a clue buffet. Lotte, Sucy, Wangari, you keep an eye on those boys that are coming!"

"Phrasing!" Lotte said.

"The good kind of phrasing!" Sucy said. She and Wangari took a moment to imagine, raising their fists in the air for the beauty of it. "We'll TTYL." The two witches picked Lotte up under her arms and carried her off with only a little protest.

"Chariot, check in on those space cases we call teachers and see if you can't solve the bachelor auction problem and like, get us protips and help and stuff."

"My, you're putting your leadership skills to the test!" Chariot said. "It's not a bad idea, I suppose. Good luck, Akko." She headed off in no particular direction, checking her text messages to send a mass text to the student body.

"But..." Joanna whimpered. "Where's Wangari? Where are we?"

Akko put he rarms on her and Kimberly's shoulders. "We're gonna look for clues."

"Whee," Kimberly said.

A window broke nearby, well overhead, and Jasminka fell from above. She was handcuffed to a chair, but not leg-cuffed, and used the chair to break the window and was surfing it down to the thick hedges at ground level. She missed completely and landed in a crunchy, bent heap on the grass. A nearby possum with a widdle backpack opened its mouth and stared at her in displeasure.

"Probably should have done something about that," Akko said.

"Bernard!" Jasminka said, rasping through punctured lungs. "Come here, girl!"

Bernard bumbled over to Jazzy, lying on her side. Jasminka unzipped the backpack and with her tongue and lips freed a magic cookie from within, chowing down. Her injuries reversed, bones and bits popping back in place. She gulped down a couple more and was soon back up to full. "Good girl," Jazzy said, patting Bernard's head.

"Can we have a couple of those?" Akko said. "And could you forgive us for just kind of watching?"

"It's cool," Jazzy said, brushing grass from her uniform. (Where'd her coat go...?) "I'm off to see if those boys are as healthy as I hear."

"What's with her and that phrase?" Akko said, watching Jasminka (but more importantly watching Bernard) skip away.

"We know," Kimberly said.

"You don't wanna," Joanna said.

"Yeah, teamwork!" Akko said, hugging them both to their extreme displeasure.

* * *

A dense crowd gathered around and above the ground terminal. Wangari and Sucy carried Lotte on their shoulders so she could get a good look. It made her stand out all the more compared to the witches on the ground like muggles or in the air like sky-dorks. This of course was a tactical decision. "Boy oh boy, the thirst is thick on the ground today," Sucy said.

"Bet it is literally, too," Wangari said. "Eh, eh? Watch your footsteps?"

"Gu-u-uys," Lotte said, fidgeting. "Thank you, but it really is..."

"Shh," Sucy said.

"Can I at least--"

"Shhhh!" Sucy said.

The loudspeakers pinged and the announcer, some rando teacher who wasn't otherwise doing something, said, "Here comes our very special guest sponsors! Give a hand, everybody!"

Chariot ran around the crowds, parkouring up a pair of trees planted close together and into a hovering announcer's stand overlooking the entrance to Luna Nova. "Excuse me!" she said, after lingering on her ten-point landing a moment for emphasis. "May I have the mic for a moment?"

"You absolutely may not," the announcer said. She had frizzy brown hair and expensive-looking makeup. Chariot forgot her name, but she knew she'd seen her around. "What are you gonna do, announce yourself and take your panties off?"

"Did... why would you think my panties would be off in my Shiny Chariot outfit?"

"Well, one, you were obviously not wearing a bra," the teacher said. "so two, you had to be--"

"Hey, now, there's a world of difference--"

"Plus you didn't in that movie."

"That was a porn," Chariot said, "not my actual uniform."

"Eh. Either way, get the hell out, tit-haver."

Chariot cracked her knuckles. "Am I going to have to get physical?"

The teacher stood up, cricking her neck in response. "I would love it."

Back on the ground, a parade float puttered through the gate, still adorned with a Happy New Year theme. A few minor BBC personalities sat on the front end of the float, waving to mediocre reception. Annabel Creme sat on a replica Iron Throne at the midpoint of the float, drawing a bigger and highly mixed pop from the students, most of all Lotte and Barbara. Lotte tried to stand up on her friends' shoulders, to their dismay, but Annabel caught a glimpse as she was looking up from her phone and gave her a wave.

"Wow," Lotte said, starstruck.

"Easy, Finntroll, we're not to the bachelors yet," Sucy said, patting her ass. "These are just the rich people who're gonna..." She trailed off as the float escaped the portal in its entirety. Her mother was reclining along the back, smoking her long-stemmed pipe, with Diana's famously terrible family seated behind her in gaudy outfits beneath a BABY ON BOARD banner. "Oh, son of a bitch."

"The infamously divisive Daryl Cavendish!" Wangari said into her phone as she recorded the parade. "Announced her pregnancy during the Christmas season, now coming up on a month later and she's still riding the baby-having horse! Is she truly with child, or is the reigning matriarch of the Cavendishes surfing a tide of false positives? Only cruel Fate can tell us in time!"

"Hey," Lotte said, "maybe we can get her to help us find Diana!"

"Focus up," Sucy said. "We have a bigger problem on our hands."

"I don't need to... I don't need company that badly," Lotte said.

"Two bigger problems."

"But if she's--"

"I said two and I mean two, babe," Sucy said.

"Pardon the interruption," Chariot said over the loudspeakers, followed by the sound of a scuffle.

The previous announcer said, "Pardon the technic--ow--just a mo--herecometheboys!" The hovering booth exploded, but a stretch convertible emerged from the portal and that caught all sorts of attention.

There were only four teenage boys seated in that car, but they were, for all intents and purposes, the three most eligible bachelors in the universe of Luna Nova and also Louis Blackwell. Seated there was Andrew Hanbridge, whose visage dampened the panties of half the school; Frank [surname withheld], his amiable sidekick; Marito Manbavaran, Sucy's legendary cousin, whose rich tan skin, short but voluminous black hair, and Greek-statue-quality build claimed every panty not yet sullied in Andrew's presence; Louis Blackwell, who was present and trying to look friendly in spite of trying to murder Amanda that one time; and some redhead nobody recognized and may not have been there when the car came through but was most certainly seated there now.

"What a spread!" Wangari said, enunciating into her phone. "This reporter hesitantly notes that nobody from St. Joseph's is here in spite of how much love they had to share around Christmastime and, in a micro-editorial, I think that's a damn shame and they should definitely be here. Would this reporter pay charitably through the nose for a chance to get in their boxers again? Yes, m'am."

"Oh my goodness, Chariot got Marito to come?!" Lotte said, completely ignoring Wangari. She waved at him, and maybe he winked back at her? Or was he just winking in her direction with the other hearts he'd broken just by being present? "Oh, oh boy, oh boy oh boy! I never thought I'd have the chance to--"

"Yeah, I know," Sucy said, less enthused by the moment.

"I mean, maybe I wasn't... you know... clear enough the first time around! He was just being professional! I--"

"We heard, babe, we heard."

"Hey, let 'er gush!" Wangari said.

"I can _smell_ her gush."

"...really?" Lotte said.

"You'll never know," Sucy said. "Anyway, so we've got the lay of the land, and we have the face of the enemy identified, and my cousin knows you're here. So that's step one."

"What's step two?" Lotte said.

"Cheating like motherfuckers," Sucy said.

* * *

"Step one," Akko said. "The room." She wound up for a roundhouse kick, but Kimberly grabbed her foot.

"Easy, killer," Kimberly said. Joanna pulled on some gloves and opened Diana's door. "Don't wanna damage the crime scene."

"Oh, right," Akko said, hopping away and letting Jojo and Kim-Kims take the lead.

"Jeez, s'cold in here," Kimberly said, jotting that fact down as she walked in. "And that heater's still going. Hate to see the bill this month. What's lettin' out..."

"Window's open!" Akko said. "I guess I forgot to close it when I left. You know, little things slip your mind in the heat of the moment."

Diana's room was icy, frost riming the mirrors and dampness setting in on the books. Joanna took the lead, snapping plentiful pictures. "Jeez, I don't get digs like this. The family pays for the bigger room, right? Does she have roomies?"

"I don't think so," Akko said. "I've slept here a few nights and Diana's only got company if she invites it."

"Lucky bastard," Kimberly said, writing exactly that in her notepad. 'Hey, anybody take a vid out this window?"

"A what?" Akko said, and looked over in time to see Kimberly leaning halfway out the window. "Woah, watch it!"

"I'm fine, got cat-like... stuff." Kimberly looked way down. "Hey, is there supposed to be like a big hole in the roof right outside the window?"

"I don't think so," Akko said. "Can I see?"

She squeezed in alongside Kimberly. Yep, that was a big hole in the roof. With the rest of the roof covered in a couple inches of snow it looked less like a jagged architectural failure and more like a spooky sinkhole into an endless cavern far below. There was a draft, or else Akko imagined a draft coming out of it like a breath.

"I'm goin' in, Akko said," Akko said. She reached for her wand slowly and waited for her new sidekicks to chime in.

"Okay," Kimberly said. "Take a lot of pictures. You got a phone, right?"

"Dude, really? Just lettin' me jump down the Scare Hole like a damn pony?"

"A what?"

"A pony. Doesn't know anything about magic even a little bit. Jasminka's been a big fan of that one. Then it's a checker, then it's a charger? You know?"

Kimberly stared at her, and Kimberly was fantastic at staring.

"Okay, I'll get my broom, you guys do you."

* * *

Luna Nova's tiny, seldom-used parking garage had a snack table set out for the visitors, laden with cafeteria food and what everyone had to trust was a non-alcoholic punch brewed by Prof. Finnelan. "Thank you all for coming," Headmistress Holbrooke said. "And apologies for the scuffle."

"I've come to expect unusual things from Luna Nova," Paul Hanbridge (who rode shotgun with the limo driver). "I presumed the brawl was a tradition."

Chariot adjusted her glasses, one of the lenses popping out and clattering onto the asphalt. "No, I just had--" The mysterious teacher whacked her in the head with a folding chair. "Son of a--I've got--" The teacher smashed her in the face again. "Oh, come the hell on!" Chariot seized her opponent by the neck and charged out of the garage.

"The nerve of that woman," Mrs. Manbavaran said, blowing a long plume of liao-smoke through her full lips.

"You ain't kiddin', hoss," the mysterious redhead with the curiously strong and uneven Southern accent said. "By the by, ain't suppose you got more of these san'mawiches with the cheese 'n weird black shit?"

"Ah, of course!" Holbrooke said, typing out a text to the kitchen to that effect on her decade-old flip phone.

"Always a fun time around here," Andrew said, smiling and taking a sip of the pink punch. It was gently fruity, though with high notes of an astringent herbal sting. Angostura bitters? Must be.

Louis Blackwell ladled a second cup of punch and sipped, hoping that enough bitters would soothe his nerves. "O-of course, it's alright that I'm here, right? No grudges against our fair school for the late unpleasantness of the--my God, what is that animal?"

Padding across the entrance of the garage was a plump possum with a dozen possum joeys lying across her back.

"It's like a mother jumping spider crossed with a rat!" Louis said. "Did that get anywhere near the food? Are you serv--"

Paul Hanbridge cleared his throat. "Of course, our guests would never be so negligent as to allow our food to be tainted." He heard a soft splash, and turned to the snack table. There was another possum with even more babies on her back standing in the punch. There was no clear place for it to have come; he looked up and saw that a number of the pale-faced creatures were hanging by their tails from pipes in the ceiling. Many were looming over the snack table. They might have been giving puppy-dog eyes if they didn't have shark eyes.

Louis was already nearly out of the garage, running in place while waiting for the mother possum at the threshold to decide if she was going this way or that way or just stay right where she was.

"Ah, yes, let's move the welcome party elsewhere," Miranda said. "Mysterious, these little creatures. No idea where they came from."

"I could offer my services," Daryl Cavendish said, a viper slipping from under the hem of her long skirt. "Out of the goodness of my heart, of course."

A possum detached from the ceiling and landed on Maril's head. After a moment to register what happened she shrieked like a dying bunny and ran as fast as her pencil skirt would let her out of the garage, prompting Louis, who was matching her note for note and decibel for decibel, ran away from her and directly into a band of students who had come for a closer look at the lads.

Mrs. Manbavaran smirked. Daryl pointed at her fleeing daughter and laughed with her remaining daughter. An alien sensation gripped Paul, and he laughed too. "Goodness, what a start to the day's festivities."

Andrew felt an invisible pressure lighten and laughed with his dad.

"Seriously, though," Holbrooke said, gesturing, "I have some emergency snacks hidden in my office and no unusual furry animals."

Another possum landed on Annabel's head. She continued reading the Spirit Morph Saga omegaverse fic she'd been bingeing since last night and gave the little guy a scratch under the chin, which he appreciated. Frank joined in, stroking the lil' beast's back as they surrendered the parking structure and its nutrients to the marsupials.

* * *

Akko held her breath and floated out of the window and into the Scare Hole.

"I'm goin' in," she said through the walkie-talkie she picked up from a pair of goblins by asking really nicely and giving them puppy-dog eyes. "Out."

"Roger roger," Kimberly said. "You know, someone might say that Star Wars 1 ruined that for 'em but I think it's still pretty catchy."

"Noted," Akko said, and wondered if this was what it was like to be someone who wasn't her when she was in Mission Hero Mode. The darkness was the pitchiest she'd ever seen it, and she'd been to space. There was a difference between space, which was a lot of nothing with some stuff in it, and this, which was a whole lot of nothing with a lot of just herself and nothing else in it. Plus pitch was supposed to be like The Ultimate Goo, right? Moving so slowly they had to train a robot to look at it drip and even he fell asleep a few times? This darkness was so dark it felt like it had a texture. On a scale of all the goop she had been covered in, this would rate a 3. Too dark, too scary. Had a musty stink to it, too, growing stronger all the time.

"Am I still coming in, over?" Akko said.

"You're okay," Joanna said. "I think you're okay. Don't tell my doctor I said that, he'll chew my ear off if he hears."

"Sure," Akko said. She fired off a flare spell into the dark below--

\--and why did that phrase give her an instinctive, familiar shudder?

\--and a brilliant light fluttered below her, lighting up an old-fashioned theater. A really old-fashioned theater, with a scary painting of moss and stuff at the back of the stage, and a pile of mattresses, and scary carpet (she assumed, as the carpet was lost in pools of dark), and... hey, those curtains were cut.

Akko aero-inched over to it, narrowing her eyes. Why, Video Diana was wearing musty burgundy robes that matched the grossness and color of this fabric. She must have fallen down here, thought she was gonna go crazy or die, made a crazy-person death shawl, and... remembered how to get out? Must formulate theory further. She activated her walkie and reported back.

"Cool," Kimberly said. "See any other hints?"

Akko noticed the red sign on the wall. After a few long moments, the right gears clicked into place. "I do, I did, I do." She drifted back over to the stage and snapped a pic. "We'll have to get the smart people to figure this out. I mean, identify it, whatever you do with a scary symbol."

"Could you look around a little more?" Joanna said. "Like, there's gotta be more clues or whatever. Like, footprints, spell residue, that kinda stuff, maybe?"

"Fi-i-ne," Akko said. She took a deep breath thick with must and wet rot and nearly hacked it all up on the exhale. She hovered over the rows of seats, shining a light spell across them. A few sweeps of her light revealed a near-mummified corpse strewn across a couple of the seats, a corpse ending in a twisted knot of spine at the midsection, the rest of them missing. Long strips of cloth were cut from their shirt, even and measured compared to the rough fray of their shirt's hem.

She was suddenly very glad she hadn't gotten around to eating yet in spite of how angry her stomach was. Well, before she saw the dead guy. Was that a guy? Did she wanna take that closer a look?

Backstage, that's the trick. She jammed her phone into her pocket, took her broom with one-and-a-half hands (gotta keep a hold on that walkie), and floated over the rotting floorboards and behind the curtains and into the nice, safe place where the people who did the plays would've gone to smoke and change clothes.

The dressing room, even dustier and colder than the stage outside, had been ransacked in a deliberate and careful way. The drawers were all open, the mirrors all shattered, the wardrobes yawning like huge mouths leading to grimdark reboots of Narnia. A circle of clothes surrounded the middle of the room, each dusted and laied out with costume jewelry and props--clip-on earrings, small crowns, necklaces, prop wands and swords and guns and a paper moon. At the center of the room was a signature--a replica of that red symbol, blasted into the floorboards with magic.

Akko checked in with her crew. "You guys done up there?"

After a long minute, she said, "Seriously, are you guys done?"

"Are you?" Kimberly said. "You gotta say 'over,' over."

"I'm done, are you done, over."

"We've been done, we're just waitin' for you," Kimberly said. "Want we should get you a drink or something, over?"

"Yeah, that'd be nice," Akko said. "I think there were some scary mannequins playing dress-up down here, but they got raptured, I also think. I'm gonna take a picture and run away 'cause, uh, I think I'm done. No, redact that, I know that I'm done. Over."

"Whatever," Kimberly said. "Over."

Akko dug into her pocket for a moment before deciding that no, she was not in the mood to combine balancing on her broom with checking out her pockets. She set down on the ground, broom in hand, and a bitter snap heralded a spell being cast.

One of the dresses sat up. It was filled out now by a smoky figure, like a glass statue full of evening mist. Its costume jewelry attached themselves where they should, the prop pistol in its hand.

"Where is my mind...?" it said with dawning terror, pointing its gun at Akko. A distant fire burned in the depths of the barrel Akko was now looking down.

Akko reached for her walkie, held it up to her face, said "Meep. Over," dropped her walkie, and went for her wand.


	4. Welcome to the Die-Land

"You had _rumaki_ as an emergency snack," Annabel said, eating yet another from her plate piled high with chicken-liver-and-water-chestnut-wrapped-with-bacon appetizers. "If I may make a suggestion, lead with them next time. I have rescheduled book tour stops based on availability of rumaki."

"I hate to admit, I just don't like to share," Miranda Holbrooke said. "I love rumaki so. I just broiled these up to... I think the phrase is 'pre-game?' To pre-game for the bachelor auction later." The two were seated next to each other in leather smoking chairs and splitting the rumaki between themselves while the rest of the guests helped themselves to fare that didn't involve organ meat. On no notice Holbrooke could lay out quite the spread.

"These are really delicious," Annabel said. "Family recipe?"

"In that it's my recipe, yes! I knew I had to make it for myself after a staff party at Trader Vic's back in, I think, '68."

"You have to share."

Over at the punch table, Paul and Andrew Hanbridge sipped and talked. "Son, I want you to know," Paul said, "I trust you to exemplify the Hanbridge name with dignity." He saw Andrew open his mouth and spoke more softly, and insistently: "You're a growing young man, and these people... these witches, I know now are for the most part trustworthy. But I can't know who you'll end up paired with tonight and I can't say with any confidence that every witch here is a saint. I want you to know that if anything should happen that's against your wishes, if you feel intimidated..." He glimpsed around, seeing nobody else was looking, and slipped his son what looked like a matte-black lighter. "Flip it, hit the button. Help will arrive."

Andrew was a little mortified, but he slipped the distress beacon (or whatever gizmo it was) into his pocket, making a show of patting it. "Yes, sir. And thank you."

Paul patted his shoulder. "If something goes wrong. Of course, it could all go right, and you'll have a lovely time with--"

Warm smoke washed over his neck and thick a thick cloud of white, herbal-smelling smoke drifted past him. Andrew looked aside. "Speaking of," he said.

"Good day," Mrs. Manbavaran said. "Paul Hanbridge, yes? The earl?"

"The same, yes," Paul said, turning to the tall, frankly ludicrously buxom witch. "You're the mother of one of Andrew's friends here, yes?"

"Indeed, I am," she sighed. "A humble florist growing a native crop as best I can in these demon days. Would you like to talk, Earl?"

Well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. "How is the weather where you've come from, m'am?"

"Hot and humid. The spiders dream in their burrows and webs and the scorpions have taken the opportunity to eat their fill." She ignited an arc of electricity between her fingers and puffed on her pipe, drawing the electric spell into the bowl and igniting the black tar. "For the black lotus, too, this is the season of dreams. Do you know the faith of Atlach-Nacha?"

"Tell me," he said, and the two paired off and stepped away.

The redheaded stranger was on their third cheese and pickle sandwich and second can of Wolf Cola. "Damn," he said, "why were they hiding this from me?"

"Never was one for Branston pickle," Andrew said.

"Wasn't talkin' to you, uh, hoss." His accent veered back towards the southern.

"Are you from around here?" Andrew said. "If we've met, I'm sorry that I don't recognize you."

"Oh, naw, you ain't seen me before." After a moment of thought he balanced his drink on his head and held out his now-free hand. "Miracle Fountain Doll Steak II, of the Houston Doll Steaks. I'm from Texas. Mah daddy makes fashionable swords for the man about town, mah mamma makes hand-crafted breast-milk-flavored CBD vape juice. We're stupid rich."

Andrew shook. "Andrew Hanbridge, son of the earl, if you didn't overhear."

"Pleased to meetcha."

"Mommy," Meril said, "this Pina Colada is too cold and it made my head hurt."

"Then wait for it to melt and warm up," Daryl said as she lay sprawled on Holbrooke's desk, sipping from a tall virgin Bloody Mary. "You remember what happened the last time I gave you a Xanax when your drink was too cold?"

"I stopped breathing," Meril sighed.

"And when the drugs wore off and the snakes were breathing for you, you had to take another Xanax because the snakes in your chest were scaring you, and it went on and on until they replaced all of your blood, like Keith Richards. It was so very inconvenient. So wait."

"Yes, m'am," Meril said, wandering off in no particular direction and grappling with the nightmare that was her existence.

"Now that is a lady in need of direction in her life," Marito said while being extremely handsome.

"Glad she's not a student," Frank whispered. "I'd hate to have to entertain one of them for an evening."

"Oh, she'd be an easy treat," Marito said. "The only real trick would be finding a decent-quality pig on short notice, then deciphering during the meal whether she'd prefer to stargaze or swim afterward, and then, optionally, comes the lovemaking."

Meril drank half her cocktail in a single gulp, crying.

"You're a braver man than I," Frank said.

"Bravery has nothing to do with it, my friend," Marito said. He had more to say, but someone interrupted him:

"Hey," Louis Blackwell said, "which of these buttons calls the help? The champagne bucket is insufficiently iced." He was behind the headmistress's desk, feeling around for a summoning implement.

"Little blue button with the picture of a mountain on it!" Headmistress Holbrooke said. "Can't miss it."

Louis found two blue buttons next to each other, one with several upward-pointing peaks, another with a smooth, rolling hump. He interpreted the latter as a mountain and hit it.  
Holbrooke's desk receded into a hidden niche in the floor. Another niche opened and a 1:1 scale faux-crystal statue of Jabba the Hutt took its place. The intricate construction and semi-opacity could not entirely conceal that it was a gigantic water pipe.

"What in the name of God?" Louis said.

Paul chuckled. "Someone's in touch with their inner child." Through a combination of luck and inexperience he didn't realize what he was looking at.

Fortunately, Miracle Fountain cleared that up right away. "Holy shit, that's the biggest bong I've ever seen."

"Biggest what?" Paul said.

Annabel stifled a laugh. Holbrooke blushed furiously. Surely this was the most embarrassing event going on at Luna Nova at this very instant.

* * *

The clothes ghost shot Akko in the head. A mote of brimstone shattered against her forehead, knocking her for a loop, but blessedly not killing her instantly. Fortunately, she lost her balance and fell into a pile of broken mirror shards instead.

Akko's shriek of pain was enough to break the broken mirror even further; she stumbled around trying to brush glass shards from her skin and finding out the hard way that was not how it worked. The clothes ghost watched in stunned silence as she bumbled around the room, bleeding and screaming, 'til a healing spell popped into her head and against all odds she cast it, purging her wounds of glass and sealing them, if not quite taking the pain away.

"Oh, God, that was a bad move," Akko said, leaning against a Shit Narnia entryway and panting for breath. "Okay, okay. I think I'm good. I think I'm..."

All five of the empty costumes were now ghosts, each carrying some prop weapon now glinting with a dull red glow on their business ends: glinting along the dull edge of a sword, wrapped like burning twine around the head of a royal staff.

"Where is my mind?" the pistoleer said, aiming.

"Gimmie a--" Akko said, calling up a force shield before her wand as the monster fired on her again. "Alright, let's not. Blammo, bitch! Fusilo!" Akko shot a barrage of magic missiles at the pistolier, punching holes through its outfit.

"Where is my mind?" the gunner said, the other monsters raising their weapons and charging Akko.

Akko, in a moment of brilliance, turned tail and ran, firing off spells behind her to slow them down. The clothes ghosts slashed through conjured spider webs and smashed through a wooden sign of Akko holding up a STOP sign. With a little space between her and her enemies she had time to improvise.

"Metamorphie faciesse!" she said, transforming herself into her favorite battle morph and promptly crashing straight through the dilapidated floorboards into an even fouler and more light-killing dead zone below. Unconcerned, she closed her eyes and charged through ancient stage mechanisms and over a few corpses she would endeavor to not think about until later, smashing free of the front of the stage and into the audience.

"Alright, I'm free!" she said to herself for morale purposes. "And now all I gotta do is fly up out of here. ...And I forgot my broom... and this form can fly. Alright, let's do it!" She took a deep breath and swelled up, floating up like the world's most adorable balloon. Smooth sailing. Easy. No problem at all. Just keep going up and up and up 'cause this thing wasn't spectacular at obtaining height but it was bigger and tougher than any bird form she could take and she didn't want to risk getting--

POK

Brimstone crashed against her orange hide. "Ha!" she said, "Barely felt it!" Indeed, it was like a warm tickle at this size and distance, working against gravity. She saw the glint of the clothes ghosts' weapons in the dark and waggled a soolnd at them, trying to flip them off with her middlemost toes. Not that they could see it, but it made her feel better.

A slithery loop of red rushed at her and pulled tight around her waggling soolnd. She stopped floating upwards and was soon dragged towards the ground and the clothes ghosts. The one with the gun kept shooting at her to--well, maybe she just didn't like her.

"Uh oh," Akko said, flapping her ears and straining against the clothes ghosts' combined pull. The pull on her front leg doubled the problem of flying against gravity, and the pistoleer was emptying her gun (if it could go empty, but given that was the twentieth or so bullet hitting her thinner-skinned tummy it probably couldn't) into her. Transforming into something smaller and more vulnerable was too dangerous, getting dragged down was a distinct possibility, she needed to think, thinky-think-think--

"'scuse me," Joanna said as she and Kimberly descended on one of Diana's spare brooms, a floodlight mounted on her shoulder.

"Thank you deus ex machina!" Akko said, teary-eyed.

"Cortador de viento!" Kimberly said, flinging a bunch of green-colored air-scythes at the ghosts' lasso and cutting her free. The elewitch righted herself in mid-air, got some lift, and detransformed and latched onto the broom, holding on one-armed right behind Kim-Kim's butt.

"Lift!" Akko said, pouring energy into the broom, and the three lifted out and away with the clothes ghost furiously (probably furiously) plinking away to no effect as they escaped.  
"Sounded like you were havin' a bad time of it," Kimberly said. "At least there was a lot of ghost monster noise comin' from the walkie.'

"Oh boy, did that suck," Akko said.

On the ground, the pistoleer kept firing until the floodlight disappeared entirely. She lowered the gun, then pressed it to her chest and shot through where her heart had been. She fell to her knees, glove-finger curled tight around the trigger, a sizzling hole blown through her dress, trails of smoke leaking from the injury. The other ghosts simply dropped their weapons; where the burning red lines touched the wood and mattresses, the rain-damp, icy wood and patchy synthetic mattresses began to steam and hiss.

She heard her conjurer walk from the back row of seats, leaping from the flight level with the stage and landing with catlike gentleness. The conjurer touched her under her chin and lifted the faceless mask to look up. In this crypt, the only light was the sputtering flame of the ghosts' enchanted weapons and the Cherenkov-blue glow of Diana's eyes.

"There, there," Diana said, kissing them. "There will be another chance."

* * *

Wangari's war room was once the largest broom closet on campus, intended for cyclopes to store their pressure washers and cigar collections. The computers and printers were over a decade obsolete and had spent most of their life disguised as more primitive tech to squeak past the no-modern-technology rules. It also smelled like cheap cyclops-sized cigars and warm toner, which invigorated Wangari every time she set foot in the room. Like now, as she did her homework on the specifics of the auction.

She said into her walkie-talkie (there had been a sale), "Yo, Sucy, how's your research going?"

"Swimmingly," Sucy said, "and yes, that's a pun. Got any good dirt on how the auction's going to work?"

"It looks like we're... and by 'we' I mean 'everybody but us...' is getting a budget proportionate to their GPA plus some arbitrary amount for good deeds and teacher ass-kissery. Akko and Diana would have this in the damn bank if either of them were straight. Of course, that's just for starters. If things get heated, and they're gonna get heated, the real money is in hours pledged. The math on that is totally, unspeakably off."

"Indulge me."

"Every witch in school has a value multiplier for hours pledged based on the spells the school knows they can cast, their specializations--all that goodness. Lotte should get a really stupidly big multiplier 'cuz she's a prodigy spirit witch, she can put in a lot of man-hours without it technically being child labor."

"Huh, makes it easier for us... from that angle of attack, anyway."

"Mm-hm," Wangari said. "The only other spirit specialist anywhere near her caliber is Alma."

"The non-hot fat one?" Sucy said.

"The very same. I'll do a little cyberstalking, see if I can figure out her weakness. How's the asset procurement?"

"Smooth like warm Nutella and just as sweet. She'll be in our pockets in no time."

"I trust you, girl," Wangari said. "But just so you know I'm not stepping into any weird free-standing structures you have built."

"Perish the thought. Catch you later, over and out."

Wangari nodded and, feeling she deserved a break, cued up some porn.

* * *

Sucy set the plastic-bag-covered walkie on the side of the communal bath. This was one of the larger bathrooms with multiple stalls and a large heated bath for when one was done with a shower or had no sense of ettiquete. Hypothetically, she was unwinding while waiting for Lotte to finish a panic-shower, or else gawking at the Cavendish twin who was entering the second hour of a fully-clothed hot shower, her pale skin turning the blanched red of a syrup-drained shaved ice.

In truth, she was sizing up Amaranth Pansybelle Tatopoulos-Grimsby-March.

Amaranth was a deep one of exquisite breeding, at least in the "looks more or less like a person" department. Moreover, she had an uncanny resemblance to Sucy. She too had purple hair, long and combed over the left eye, though Amaranth's was a much darker shade. Her skin had a more greenish cast than gray, her eye likewise a vibrant emerald, and let's not get started on the gills along her neck. Or the bigger tits.

Seriously, let's not get started on the bigger tits. But anyway.

Amaranth was fully underwater, gills breathing steadily, her hair a violet nimbus around her head. Below the still waters Sucy could see that particular look of bliss that she knew all too well as the expression of a woman who would broke no interruption of her reverie. She had to wait, and thankfully, waiting took the form of a relaxing bath. And listening to whichever twin that was crying. That was a plus.

Lotte stepped out of her shower wrapped in a pink towel, humming as she paced to the lockers. Someone else was walking to the bath, with lots of little footsteps instead of--

Wait.

A possum snuffled the edge of the pool and hopped in, paddling around with its little hand-feet.

"They're really working themselves in," Sucy said, watching the pudgy beast swim around.

Amaranth surfaced at last, her head breaching the water. "I'm not breathing in opossum spores," she said, voice even, eye narrowed. "But I wouldn't be opposed to opossum soup."

"You and me both," Sucy said. "Sucy Manbavaran, by the way. Pleased to meet you."

Amaranth lowered her head back into the water a little. "You were at my husband's show the other night, yes?"

"I was. He puts on a good one."

"He said you were a model guest other than stealing all of the Abba-Zabas. You could have asked first. He likes those."

"I don't care," Sucy said, as whatever-twin-that-was stumbled out of the shower and saw the possum swimming between them.

The twin screamed and tore her wand free from her waist holster.

"Wait--" Sucy said, and the Cavendish fired a spell into the bath, turning the water to a potent poison. Eyes closed, sopping wet and shrieking, the twin ran out of the bathroom, blindly grabbing Lotte and throwing her at the pool as she raced for the door. Lotte caught herself before she could slip into the now-green water.

"Sucy, hang on!" Lotte said.

"Immune to poison," Sucy said, handing her the poison-soaked possum; Lotte took it by the tail, where it reflexively hung from her hand, which numbed at the touch of the water. Sucy hauled a seizing Amaranth out of the bath and set her on the warm tile floor. "I have a pouch with a skull-and-crossbones on my belt, Lotte, that's where I keep my antidotes. Bring it to that stall 'cause I gotta wash these bastards off." With a grunt she hefted up Amaranth over her shoulder, took the possum by the tail, and took them to the nearest shower.

"I--I hear you," Lotte said. She retrieved the pouch from Sucy's locker and ran as fast as she dared to the shower stall. It was the legally-mandated disability shower with the flexible nozzle and flip-up seat, Annabel propped up in the corner and the possum lying next to her. "Sucy, what am I--"

Sucy grabbed the pouch and spritzed Lotte's poisoned hand. A little sensation returned. She held it out as if waiting for a ring, watching Sucy measure a few ingredients into a cocktail shaker, muddling them together, adding a spritz of shower water, shaking it up, straining it into a jar, and pouring a measure of the contents into Annabel's mouth and rubbing her throat to encourage her to swallow. As she doted out a little antidote into the possum's mouth with an eyedropper, Annabel's breathing steadied.

"Is she gonna be alright?" Lotte said.

"Oh yeah. It'll take a sec for the damage to her bits to heal up, but she'll be good as new. Lucky she hit the water and not any of us, if that were more concentrated they'd be dead straight-up or I'd be tripping balls. By the way, you did touch the poison water on the possum, right?"

Lotte nodded.

"Alright." She picked the possum up and rubbed its belly all over Lotte's face. "Excess healing potion expresses out through and is absorbed through the skin. You don't need a lot."

Lotte stood there in stunned silence. "My hand's still tingling..."

"Because I lied." She opened Lotte's mouth and squirted in a little healing potion with the same eyedropper she put inside the possum's throat. It's a hard life, being a Manbavaran, but a Manbavaran lives for the intangible beauties of life.

Amaranth coughed. "Mercy, that was unpleasant."

"You'll live, fishy," Sucy said, giving her a thumbs up.

"Thank you," she said. "I don't suppose you know where I can get a coffee cabinet at this hour or, uh, continent? I need one after that."

"I have one better for you," Sucy said, petting the reviving possum. "How'd you like to do me a favor for saving your life?"

"I'd rather not. Are you going to un-cure me if I say no?"

Lotte slid between the two. "I'll make you the tallest coffee cabinet you've ever seen. Sucy gets a little ahead of herself, she's, ah..."

"A little bastard," Sucy said.

"...yes."

Amaranth nodded. "I can respect that. Alright, mix me up a nice cabinet and I'll talk things over with this handsome young bastard."

"Can we please put on some clothes now?" Lotte said.

Amaranth scoffed. "If you're _gauche_."

* * *

With a triumphant howl Chariot threw the curly-haired teacher whose name she got at one point and promptly forgot in the midst of bashing her and being bashed by her across campus the past hour through a plate-glass window and into a teacher's lounge, nearly hitting Holbrooke and Annabel. Chariot crawled through the frame and stood over her defeated foe at last, searching for something to say in triumph that would both satisfy her intense desire for vengeance but neither get her fired nor cause too much bad blood. You know, professional courtesy.

"Anyone who opposes me will be destroyed," she said, spitting out a tooth onto her foe.

"I get those references," Annabel said.

"Diana Cavendish has gone missing," Chariot said, and flopped onto the ground, exhausted. "Akko and some of her friends are looking for her. Haven't heard back. I'm very tired." Her eyes fluttered closed and she began dozing. She'd been getting the living hell beaten out of her too often lately; her body was shutting down for regular periods of intense healing to compensate.

"Oh, dear," Holbrooke said. "I mean, she's probably fine, but that's something we should keep in mind."

"Yeah," Annabel said. "Should I call the cops?"

"I have a written letter from the chief of police in every town linked to our gates that we should only call them in the event of a school shooting or equivalent non-magical disaster,"

Holbrooke said. "It seems none of them want a repeat of the '59 gorilla monsoon. So many dead police officers..."

"Huh, is that where he got the name?" Annabel said, Googling.

"I believe so!" Holbrooke said. "You know, I met him once when I was visiting America for, oh, I believe it was some kind of conference. They all blend together after a while. But this was back in 1976, Philadelphia, and wouldn't yo know it--"

This led to a sudden foray into wrestling trivia that derailed both their mindsets from the subject of Diana being in trouble.

* * *

The investigative team met back up at the eternal chair fire in the commons, catching each other up on what had just gone down.

"And so I learned that a coffee cabinet is a drink," Lotte said.

"It is the best drink," Amaranth said, taking a long sip from a milkshake made with coffee ice cream, coffee syrup, and milk.

"Wowzers," Jasminka said, eating some late lunch herself. "We were up to some weird stuff."

"Does anyone recognize this symbol?" Akko said, holding up her phone to reveal the crimson insignia.

The crew gathered around. "No idea," Wangari said.

"I could reverse image-search it," Joanna said, and did so. "Says here it's the logo of the Crimson King from some book series."

"Is he real?" Akko said.

"Loosely based on historical accounts of nobles who worshipped the Daemon Sultan whose name we will invoke only delicately if at all," Joanna said, "but no."

"Coulda said 'no,' saved us a bunch of trouble," Kimberly said, whittling a stake for no particular reason. (She hoped vampires were involved. She always hoped vampires were involved.)

"I wanted to be thorough..." Joanna sobbed into her hands.

"Hey, it's alright," Wangari said, patting her on the back. "You did good. Good job, Jojo."

"That leaves one big mystery left, then," Akko said. "Namely, what the H that big weird space under Diana's room was. Like, how could that even happen? There's like a bit of roof under that window and it goes like to the basement or something."

"I bet you can find the answer at our local library," Sucy said, stroking the rescued possum. The possum's name was Captain Christmas, according to Jasminka. "Or, well, Team Snoop can do that. Team Fancy has other plans. Isn't that right, Captain?" The possum didn't indicate any particular emotion.

"You better believe it," Wangari said, winking heavily.

"Alright!" Akko said, jumping onto the table for emphasis. "Jojo, Kim-Kims, to the library!"

"You haven't earned our nicknames yet," Kimberly said.

"Oh, sorry. Joanna, Kimberly, et cetera! Also I should get another broom from the dispensary because I left mine behind with the clothes ghosts! Also we should find out what the clothes ghosts are! And I lost a walkie talkie! And I just now realized we should be asking where what's-their-faces are."

"Which faces?" Sucy said.

"The... with the..." She grabbed a lock of hair and held it out. "Long but it's black?" She tugged on her hair blob. "And this one's red?"

"Oh, Hannah and Barbara," Lotte said. "I'll text Barbara right now! She's in one of my Discord groups." She sent a message: "Where are you? Are you alright?"

* * *

Barbara's phone chimed.

Hannah and Barbara shared a room down the hall from Diana's in the rich kids block of the dormitories. Their room was a little larger, a little more exclusive, and with only two beds, sparing them the nightmare of having to include someone else in their lives. Having each other was terrible enough. The walls were thick enough that a little chime like that was inaudible outside the room, so none of the possums slowly but surely claiming the rich kid rooms for themselves could vouch for the two even being present.

"Answer that," Hannah said from her bed, looking up at the walls and trying to think of a reason to get out of bed.

"Alright, fine," Barbara said, picking her phone up from her nightstand and seeing that it was a message from Lotte. She'd have looked at it if she didn't hear the soft sound of feet on the carpet. Haloing her phone was curly hair in shades of blonde. She lowered her phone and there was Diana, smiling, uniform immaculate. A veil of mist surrounded her as if she'd just stepped out of a hot shower.

"Hello, " she said, almost purring.

"Diana!" Hannah said, heart leaping into her chest. Diana was gently unkempt, perhaps from a long night of physical activity, and her uniform was slightly marred, in particular her sleeves now detached from her uniform. "What brings you to our room? Would you like a treat? I mean, I have some--"

"As it happens, I have a treat for you," Diana said, looking at Hannah, looking at Barbara, looking in truth at neither of them. She spoke into her wand, and the hallucinatory visions mimicked her speech. "How would you like to spend a little time alone with me?"

"Yes, please," Barbara said, rolling out of bed.

"Where are we going? Are we staying here? Are we going into your room? Can we?" Hannah said.

"Take my hand," Diana said, "and follow me."

They did, without hesitation, each grabbing an imaginary hand, and followed Diana into a wide hole carved out of their floor, falling forever into the darkness.


	5. Down on the Harm

"Molly," Sucy said. She beckoned.

"Yeah, man, Molly," Wangari said, giving her the binoculars.

"I have never heard of this one," Sucy said, looking through them at the mark. She was ebony-skinned, with long, straight aqua hair. She was nervously drawing in a sketchbook, paying particular attention to the three handsome visitors doing a West Wing walk-and-talk thing on the salt-dappled sidewalks. "I'm not totally sure I've seen her, either. Are you making her up? Is she one of those outside-context people like disguise boy and his fishwife?"

"I'm no fishwife!" Amaranth said.

"Pardon, his fish monster to whom he is married."

"Thank you."

"Whatever she is," Wangari said, "she's close to my color and I don't know where she comes from, so once I get a close-up look I can case her properly. And then we're gonna be in business."

"Do you know if she has any outstanding skills or usefulness to us?" Sucy said.

"No, but we can fix that in post. That and I don't know the name of that one broad with the red afro. She'd be my first but at least I know this one's name, you know?"

"I know Rashmi and Ranji," Sucy said. "They're synthesists, that's a pretty useful thing to be for our purposes. Why not pick them up?"

Wangari narrowed her eyes at her. "Hey, you can't just pick any brown girl and put her in place of another. What about bone structure, facial features? They're from India, I'm from Kenya."

Sucy was holding up her hand.

"What?" Wangari said.

"You have orange hair. How many Kenyan girls can say that?"

"One, how many Fillipina girls can say they're purple-haired? Two, I'm blonde, Sucy."

"One, that's personal. Two: sure you are."

"Why the _hell_ are you challenging me on this?! Ammy, you have my back on this, right? I'm blonde?"

"Sure," Amaranth said, stroking Captain Christmas's back as he chlorped away on a berry that had been growing low on the bush.

"Is that bush talking?" Frank said, pointing at the bush they were hiding under, up to their chins in icy mud with frost-rimed branches digging into their backs, a wide swathe of snow piled on top of the ice cleared so they could see out.

"No, sir!" Wangari shouted back. "Just your imagination!"

Frank looked at his walking partners. "Did you guys hear that too?"

"Hrm?" Andrew said, looking up from his phone.

"Nope," Miracle Fountain said, arms crossed over his chest and a smug smirk on his face.

Frank laughed nervously. "Yeah, just my... just my imagination..."

"Speaking of blond," Wangari said, sotto voce, "isn't it kinda weird that 'blond' is gendered even in English? And it's gendered with a silent 'e?'"

"No, let's go back one," Sucy said. "Why can't we just swap you out for one of the twins?"

"Because it doesn't work that way! Do we have even remotely similar noses, Sucy? How much actual magic would it take to--"

One of the twins lay on the grass, looking at the four of them. "Hey," she said, "I heard you talking about me and Rashmi?"

"Hello, Rajani," Sucy said, smiling. "Hypothetically, do you think you could pass yourself off as Wangari?"

"I do," she said. "Why, does she not think so?"

"I'm saying it's complicated," Wangari said, trying to keep her tone even.

"Probably, but whatever," Rajani said. "Why is it important we look kind of alike, again?"

* * *

Chariot woke up lying on a cot, covered by a thin, itchy blanket and with a flat pillow under her head stolen from an airport by... ah, someone, sometime ago. She groped around for her glasses or her wand, found her glasses first, then her wand in a wand holder by the door, and after a long moment standing stupefied in the door leading out of the teacher's lounge she checked her wallet. Dammit, somebody fleeced a twenty off of her. "Son of a..."

 _Diana's in danger,_ she thought, and called Miranda.

* * *

Meanwhile, in the drama department's theater--not the old theater, the new one built in 1980-something--Miranda felt her phone vibrate against her hip and so answered it. "Mm, hello?" she said.

"Diana!" Chariot said. "You're helping her, right?"

Headmistress Holbrooke scratched her head. "I believe so. You mentioned she was, what was it, sleeping in?"

"Kidnapped! Or missing! Not present anywhere we're looking and not accounted for!"

"Oh. Oh! Right!" Miranda said, snapping her fingers. "I'd forgotten. What should we do, dear?"

"Don't--don't 'dear' me! What could be happening that puts your mind off a missing student, headmistress?!"

She held out her phone. A short distance away on-stage, Annabel Creme was busting a move to "Gimmie The Loot" playing on Badcock's heirloom ghetto blaster, waving her small body and ample hair to a hip-hop classic. The minor BBC personalities were cheering her on or beatboxing while the teachers present pretended to help the fairies assemble the stage and clear away possums for the night's bachelor auction.

"...that's pretty good, I'll give you," Chariot said. "But please exhibit some kind of minimal amount of care for the well-being of not just one of your students but one of your most prized and psychologically borderline students."

"Yes, Chariot! I'll have this settled in a jiffy. Thank you kindly for the reminder."

"I will be calling again in ten minutes, headmistress."

"Of course," Holbrooke said. "I'll have good news then." She hung up, raised her wand, and cast the hail for the Student Sheriffs to alert them to a campus issue. Three of the badges, unassigned as of the new year, pinged away in their storage locker. She had no response from Amanda O'Neill's, which was odd, as she was prone to answering around half a second after the alert sounded. Last but far from least, was--

* * *

Kimberly's seat pocket made a noise like a submarine in a cartoon. "Ah, frick, I'm needed," she said, waving Joanna out. "I'll answer this, you bring the stuff to Akko, what we got so far, I mean."

"Alright," Joanna said, creeping out of the reading room and closing the door behind her. The librarians had ditched a few hours earlier, according to one of the volunteers; they arranged an informal dance-off to pass the time and handle any students who might need to use the library. Akko ran defense while the two journalists went to do their reading.

On a stack of beaten-up cardboard set down in the middle of the paperback racks, Akko bounced, popped, and locked to "Same Song" by Digital Underground in an eerily coincidental mirror of Annabel. The library volunteers cheered her on as she made a fifth attempt at spinning on her head and failing immediately and thoroughly. "Next time," Akko said, getting back on her feet and doing a weird little jumping-kicking-in-place sort of routine.

"Excuse me!" Joanna said, holding out a few sheets of Xeroxed paper like they were newborn Simba. "We have an initial report of... stuff!"

"Oh, right!" Akko said, flopping into her butt and catching her breath. "How did that come along?"

"Wait, hey," one of the volunteers said, adjusting her glasses. "Did you use the library for its intended purpose? At this hour? On our watch?"

"It's like 2 pm," Joanna said.

"But it's not noon, when we opened," she said. "We may have to--"

"Shush!" Akko said, scanning Joanna's findings. "This is important!"

"Okay, whatever," the volunteer said, nibbling on a thumbnail as Akko took her time reading the papers. Kimberly finally exited the room by the time she was done.

"Diana's still missing," Kimberly said. "But apparently Holbrooke finally got the memo, so..." She shrugged. "Maybe we'll get a little more help in a minute... maybe."

In brief, Akko came to understand that the Luna Nova mana budget was not infinite, so expanding the protective wards around the grounds was prohibitively expensive. Add to that the tendency of witches to make rooms especially hexed, haunted, or heartbreaking, and even within the first century Luna Nova found itself possessed of rooms it was no longer capable of keeping on its grounds. A ritual in the name of the All in One, Outer God of Space-Time, lay a powerful spell upon the school, enabling them to eject unwanted rooms into angles of time skew from the school but still attached, leaving behind patches of building ready for reuse no matter how bad the outbreaks of flesh-melting devil gods or bone-hurting juice got. Of course, with the ebbing of magic in recent decades, even that was no longer always cost-effective, and so nearly 30% of the school was now composed of rooms that were not to be spoken of aloud if possible.

"Man," Akko said. "That's... man."

"These _are_ the people who forgot that their loan from that dragon, what's-his-tits... Lofwyr?" Kimberly said.

"Fafnir," Jojo said.

"Totally forgot that Fafnir didn't have any usury in that contract."

"Or any interest at all!"

"It's all usury in my book, Jojo. Taxation may not be theft," Kimberly growled and ran a Bowie knife perilously close along her throat, "but interest sure as fuck is."

"Please be careful with that," Joanna said.

"Eat me," Kimberly said, throwing it into a copy of The Italian's Forgotten Baby. The impact of the knife hitting the paperback rack jostled the possum on that rack; they landed on the carpet and rolled over and played dead, emitting a vile fake-death fart.

"So, nothing about a clothes ghost or two or three?" Akko said, stepping away from the unconscious possum.

"The ghost reference stuff got cleared out," Joanna said, trying to extricate Kimberly's knife from within what turned out to be a stack of five paperback books. "Tobin, Spates, Kemp, nothin'."

"Don't suppose we could force you to surrender the list of who checked those books out, eh?" Kimberly said, picking her nails clean with a second, larger Bowie knife.

"Oh, we hand that shit over without any warning," the volunteer said. "Can you guess who's checked out _Tantric Sorcery Vol. 5: Anal_ fifty times in the past three months? Always returned the same day and smelling funny?"

"Don't care. Who took the books on spooks?"

"No clue. They were here yesterday when we closed up shop and now they're not."

"I can make an educated guess who's got 'em," Akko said, "because I used the library to find out what an 'educated guess' is."

"So, seeing as how witches still haven't heard of that whole 'e-book' thing," Kimberly said, putting her knife-wielding arm around the librarian's shoulder and tickling her chin with the knife's clip, "do you think you could let us have a quick browse through, say, the school copy of the Necronomicon? Seein' as how we're saving Diana Cavendish and all." She tapped the sheriff's badge pinned on her vest.

"Whatever," the volunteer said. "It's a boring day anyway. You can't really make it worse than it is."

* * *

It took upwards of ten minutes for the volunteer to open the locks and suspend the panoply of curses keeping the vault secure. "Here you go," the volunteer said, dragging open the gigantic cold-iron door. "One copy of the Necronomicon, ready to..."

The vault's walls were warded iron, the ceiling plated with silver spikes, the floor shag carpeting over hardwood.  The hardwood they could see through the large hole sawed into the floor. A podium in the middle of the room had a less-dusty rectangle where a good-sized book should be sitting.

"Oh, goddammit!" the volunteer said, kicking the podium and hurting her toe. "Oh, _goddammit_!!" She shoved the podium down and over the hole. "The librarian's gonna tan my ass over this!"

"So Diana's got the book from _Evil Dead_?" Akko said. "Ha, ha, that Diana... always... doing her reading... we should be worried."

"Very," Joanna said, taking a whiff from her inhaler.

Kimberly groaned. "Okay. Plan B."

* * *

At three o'clock, an hour ahead of the bachelor auction, the boys took an early tea in Holbrooke's office, at present the only place lacking in both students and possums. Miranda had, by way of apology for having to join Chariot in looking for "a student assuredly just playing an amusing prank," made them a kettle of Earl Gray and a profusion of cucumber sandwiches.

"So," Miracle Fountain said, "since we're all gentlemen here, how's about we compare dicks?"

Andrew took a sharp sip of tea and coughed up half of it back into his cup.

"What! It's a Texas thing! Plus teatime is boring."

"I've been to Texas and that is not a Texas thing," Frank said.

"Where in Texas? Dallas? Los Angeles? I'm from Waco, man! Things are wacky up there! Or are you all just big ol'... uh... chickenboys?"

Louis Blackwell scoffed. "I'm no chickenboy. Step back and watch a real man do things Texas-style." He stood up at the table.

"Excuse me," Andrew said, turning around in his seat.

"One sec'!" Miracle Fountain said, holding up a finger at Louis.

"If you insist," Louis said, unsubtly attempting to badger his junk into an erection. "I'll need a moment to prepare, anyway... think about... you know... tits."

Miracle Fountain leaned over to Andrew and whispered softly in his ear: "booook bokbokbokbokbokbokbok"

Andrew blushed. "I'm not budging," he said, thinking of the emergency lighter his father had provided.

"Sure you won't, sweet cheeks," Miracle Fontain said, leaning back. "Alright, Louie, whattya got?"

"Just... wait a moment..." Louis said, trying not to make it obvious how much he had to fondle his dick to get it to respond under pressure.

"If he's still waiting," Marito said, setting his teacup down and brushing his hands on a napkin, "may I take a turn?"

"Sure thing, man," Miracle Fountain said.

Marito hopped onto his chair, pulled aside the skirt of his tunic, and popped out a teak pillar of a boner.

Miracle Fountain gasped, managing to grow a bit paler. "Good Lord," he said.

Frank stared, then slapped himself. "Yeah? That's how we're playin' it? I got one for you!" He climbed onto his own chair, and with only a little motivation soon presented his own rather sizeable cock for the interests of the audience.

"God _damn_!" Miracle Fountain said. "I'm lookin' at a statistical anomaly here!"

"Excuse me a moment," Andrew said, blushing like an Australian wildfire, and went for the door.

"Well!" Louis said, unzipping, "I'm--so you know, I'm a grower, not a shower, it's just going to--"

Before Andrew got to the door, it opened, Chariot standing on the other side. Her gaze was fixed around the seated Miracle Fountain looking in awe at three handsome men standing with their dicks out and facing him, Louis furiously beating his meat at him. The phrase "Witch teacher so very arrested for paederasty" popped into her head, regardless of how old they were at the moment, and she tuck and rolled away from the door, clearing room for Andrew to jump down next to her, arms over his head.

"Hello," he said. "It got a little weird in there."

"Welcome to Luna Nova," she said, waving her wand at the door and shutting it. "I don't suppose you retrieved the Censer of Dreams Undreamed from Holbrooke's vault while you were in there?"

"The what?"

Chariot sighed and caught him up to speed.

Inside the room, Louis had settled on stretching his limp penis out as much as he dared, which was further than most right-thinking men would. "There! An approximation of the glory!"

"Okay, sure," Miracle Fountain said

"Now it's your turn," Frank said, hands on his hips in an unconscious imitation of Captain Marvel. Er, Shazam. It's Shazam now.

"Right! Well--" Miracle Fountain said, and Andrew entered.

"Put your dicks up, gentlemen, there's a rescue mission afoot and a lady who would be arrested on sight for being in the same room as your naked junk needs in!"

"Ah, well, next time," he said.

"Texans," sighed Frank, zipping up. "No wonder they have an entire style of poker named after 'em."

"You're all terribly lucky," Louis said. "If I were on my A-game you'd all be doomed."

"I'm sure," Miracle Fountain said dreamily.

* * *

Lotte emerged from her third shower of the day--thank you, cold and wet bush (phrasing!)--and into a remarkably busy bathroom. Sucy had liberated a bookshelf from a reading room not too far away to block the door and left Captain Christmas outside to hiss at anyone who got too close; in privacy, she, Wangari, those twins from India, and Amaranth were discussing... something that they stopped discussing the moment Lotte could hear them. While naked. Nakedness was a big theme today, it seemed.

"Hey there," Sucy said. "You heard that Sucy Manbavaran and the Sucy Manbavaran Band are gonna be playing before the auction, yes?"

"We are?" Lotte said. "But I haven't--"

"Oh, don't you worry," Wangari said, "I'll be subbin' in for ya. Half my band is helping Akko, after all. Plus, we had to run, like, thirty songs by Holbrooke and Finnelan before we got one that wasn't too, ah... what'd she call them?"

"Confrontational," Sucy said. "Apparently 'Stand By Him' is right out, the fiends."

Everyone present took a moment to sing the line that got every witch in the audience marking out: "All witchcraft comes! From carnal lust! Which is in women, insatiable!"

"Got us in one, Malleus Maleficarum," Sucy said.

"You know," Amaranth said, "I'm not actually a witch, seeing as how I'm a deep one with no magical ability. But I do sleep out in the lake when I'm not visiting my hubby, so--"

"Your what?" Rajani said.

"My wife. My witchy wife who is a woman."

"Thought so," Rashmi said.

"So," Sucy said, "speaking of witchy wives. It so happens we all have strong opinions on fashion, and we're going to gussy the ever-loving hell out of you."

"W-well," Lotte said, "it's not like we get bonus points for dressing up. Or like I, uh, like I have to impress people at the auction..."

"But it will impress them," Sucy said, "with your forwardness and your cocksure confidence."

"Get it?" Wangari said, winking laboriously. "Cock-sure?"

"I get it," Lotte said, blushing. "I really do appreciate all this. I mean, I'm really nervous, but..."  
"Ah, don't be!" Sucy said, giving her a playful pat on the cheek. "You're the part of the plan that absolutely can't go wrong. Or have you not noticed us trying desperately to avoid passing on our wisdom to outsiders to avoid the curse?"

"The what?"

"The curse," Wangari said. "The more open you are about your plan the more it's going to screw up."

"Oh. Oh! Yeah, that's a good idea."

"Now hold still," Rashmi said, spinning her wand in a tight circle and conjuring a bolt of bright fabric. "Because this is going to take a minute."

* * *

Akko looked up from the old newsletter printouts. Her eyes bugged out at who she saw rounding the corner in the halls of Luna Nova. "Andrew!" she said, running up to her old pal and tackling him with a mighty hug.

"Akko, good to see you," Andrew said, returning the hug with no trouble. "Looking for Diana, too?"

"You know me," she said. "Me and Joanna and Kimberly found some stuff to help us look for her 'cause she's probably stuck in like these weird spooky nowhere holes that Luna Nova's full of 'cause of bad planning."

"Huh," Andrew said. "That would explain why the censer's been pointing us everywhere." Chariot rounded the corner, carrying an ancient, lantern-shaped bronze censer puffing thick plumes of indigo smoke which did not follow the currents of air but flicked to and fro and up and even down, against gravity.

"Fill us in," Chariot said, and for what felt like the sixth time today Akko did just that. "The old Performing Arts Building. There were so many horror stories about that place. Apparently you could get there from practically anywhere in Luna Nova, if you were lucky, or unlucky. Used to be that seniors would go down there to prove they were brave. Most of them came back..."

"Oh, do you know who didn't?" Akko said.

Chariot thought for a moment, mumbling names to herself. "...actually, nevermind, I think every senior I've ever met who went down there has come back. They just said that only most people came back out to make it scarier."

"Were there any devils or evil red signs when you went down there?" Akko said.

"I didn't ever go," Chariot said. "Croix talked me out of it. Said the angles of time were way too dangerous to mess with."

"... _Croix_ said that?" Akko said.

"Yeah..." Chariot said.

"Well, look on the bright side," Akko said, "we know where the Scare Hole goes, so you finally get a chance to look at it when we go to save Diana. And then we don't have to take too long at all."

"Whee," Kimberly said. "Now can we stop expositing and start doing? I'm getting itchy and that itch is for investigative rescue journalism."

"Let's!" Akko said, pointing towards Diana's room. Not that they were anywhere near it, mind, but she knew where it was as surely as a compass knows magnetic north.

"Hurrah!" Chariot said, swinging the censer.

"Yes, m'am," Andrew said.

* * *

"Well, here we are at the Scare Hole," Akko said, putting her foot on the windowsill leading to it.

"With rather more opossums than I'd have anticipated," Andrew said. One of his arms was draped with a half-dozen possums hanging by their tails and catching some quick z's. He draped them onto a fainting couch hoping they'd let go. No such luck. "I may need a minute."

"I sincerely hope Jasminka's doing something about this," Chariot said.

"Where's she been, anyway?" Kimberly said.

"I'm sure she's alright," Joanna said. "...oh."

"Well!" Akko said. "As soon as we solve the problem, then we can--"

Andrew's phone rang.

"My phone arm is currently my possum arm," he said. "Can someone help me with this?"

* * *

Holbrooke tapped her toe, waiting for Andrew to pick up.

"Hello?" he said.

"Hello, young Mr. Hanbridge!" she said. "The time fast approaches for the bachelor auction. I certainly hope you're ready for it."

"With all due respect, m'am, I have more important things to be doing right now. Besides, with Mr. Doll Steak, you'll have four bachelors for the lineup again."

"Ah... if you insist," Holbrooke said, making a throat-cutting gesture. Nearby, Badcock flashed her a thumbs up and hung up on the restaurateur she was chatting up to provide a date for the auction. "That's coming along at a good pace, yes?"

"If you could spare any more help, we could use it," Andrew said, "which I am pretty sure Chariot said she asked you to provide earlier today."

"Oh, well, you know how it is," Holbrooke said. "It's been a busy and, ah, temperamental day."

Andrew sighed. "If they need direction, tell whoever you send to go up to Diana's room and go out the window and into the hole on the roof. Please and thank you."

"Of course, young Mr.--" He hung up. She sighed. "Samantha, could you see if anyone wants to go help?"

"Of course," Badcock said, leafing through her contact list to find likely candidates.

Holbrooke sank into the spinny roller chair and rolly-spinned a bit. "Samantha, do you think this will work?"

"Well, Miss Super Celebrity thinks it'll work and she's fairly bright, I suppose I should have confidence," Badcock said, issuing a few texts. "If something goes wrong it won't be for her lack of trying. I mean, look over there."

Most of the sponsors and guests had headed to the theater, but Mrs. Manbavaran had snuck off with Sir Hanbridge to here, a teacher's office near the front of the fine arts building. The two were presently splitting a pouch of liao.  
Mrs. Manbavaran sat on the floor, Paul Hanbridge laying his head in her lap. She took a deep pull from her pipe, held it for a long moment. She lifted Paul's head and kissed him, breathing smoke into his throat. His eyes were open and staring, nigh-unblinking. "What do you see?" she said.

"Outside the angles," Paul said, trembling. "Something... something is in the curves of time, outside the angles..."

"The hounds of Tindalos," Manbavaran said. "Lean and athirst. And far away. Don't you worry, little boy..."

"Not far away," he said.

"Hm?"

"Not far away. Here." He turned his face and coughed, hacking up glowing blue protoplasm into Mrs. Manbavaran's lap.

She sighed. "Of course you can't hold your liao."

"Should we take that seriously?" Holbrooke said.

"He's a lightweight," Mrs. Manbavaran said, possibly rolling her eyes, not that anyone here could see that. "Unless someone's having sex right now and baiting them like slasher movie heroes."

* * *

In the changing rooms backstage (for there were ten one-person dressing rooms, after the original locker room saw a fight that resulted in three fatalities), Louis knocked on Miracle Fountain's door. The man answered it. "Y'ello?" he said. He glimpsed down, seemingly by instinct, and saw, as the poet said, Blackwell's raging stiffie. "Dreamin' about chasin' rabbits, youngblood?"

Louis pushed into Doll Steak's room, not getting any real resistance back. "I just couldn't--I was under stress earlier," Louis said. "I'm more than either of those bastards. And now I can show you just how much more than either of them I am."

"I bet you can," Miracle Fountain said, pulling out a small bottle of lubricant and a few condoms from his breast pocket. "Wanna show me just how deep you can go?"

"You're on," Louis said, snatching the lube from his hand and twisting it open with his teeth.

It was a good five minutes before either of them noticed Barbara in the corner. By then it was well too late:

"Oh, All in One, how did you get laid before I did?!"

Miracle Fountain sputtered. "Barbara? The hell are you doing here?!"

"Barb...?" Louis said, stopping mid-thrust to stare at the intruder and her weird outfit. "Have you been watching us? My God, have you no propriety whatsoever?"

"Oh, I don't have any propriety? Tell that to Amanda!" She pointed at Miracle Fountain.

"...Amanda...?" Louis said.

"Aman... no, you're thinking of somebody else," Miracle Fountain said, laughing.

Barbara grabbed a lock of her own hair and pointed at the bottom. "You didn't even change the blonde parts, you jackass! That's even the same outfit you wore in the photo you took after the Holy Grail thing!"

"It... oh my God, it is," Louis said, realization washing over him. "Is that why you won't let me pull your pants down further?"

"I mean, you could, but then I'd have to say that like I was trans or something and that feels like I'd be lying a little too hard for it to be cool?" Amanda said. "But, uh..."

"You're lucky I'm pansexual, you bitch," Louis said, pale with fury but definitely not getting any less hard.

"How did anybody in this entire school not know it was you?" Barbara said.

"I changed the shape of my nose," she said, pointing at her slightly longer than normal nose. She flicked it; at the spell ended. "You notice like everybody has the same nose unless they're that one, like, fangirl from America we got at the Enchanted Parade? What's up with that?"

"Gaah, screw you, O'Neill!" Barbara kicked the dresser in a huff and hurt her toe. "Ow, ow, ow, ow...!"

"Can we finish having sex, please?" Louis said.

"Sure, whatever. I got time. Sons'a..." Barbara fetched a cigarette from her costume's purse, lit it with a spell, and waited for them to finish up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gonna be doubling down on finishing some original work this February, expect updates to slow down.
> 
> Also, is holding off on tags to prevent spoilers alright, or is it presumed that people who care about that sort of thing hide tags to begin with? Still feeling pretty new here, feel free to tell me what's alright.


	6. Saturday Night's Alright for Biting

Just outside Diana's room, on that tiny spit of roof below her window, Akko's crewe were brooming into the Scare Hole.

Inside the theater, guests and visitors and gawkers followed goblins on stilts to their seats and put in orders for drinks and food.

In the kitchens, the cook-fairies all took a shot of cooking sherry to prepare themselves for battle. The head chef gave an inspiring speech about earning money for whatever it was they were going to earn money for, and that now was the time to finally, finally achieve their collective ultimate dream.

In the rich kid dorms, much closer to Diana's room and probably should have been touched on first, Jasminka warmed up her pipes and played a few questing notes on a spellflute. This one was made from sassafras, inlaid with ash in arcane patterns and capped with a wand's moonsilver prongs. As she played, some of the possums around her ankles perked up their ears.

The high-quality snacks and aromatic, unpissed-on scent of the rich kid dorms had sung out to most of her friends. It was standing room only in the main hallway, perhaps a hundred or more possums waddling around, some eating, some peeing, many screaming at their own ass. Doing everything that a possum should do, in other words. She was proud of them. It was almost a pity she had to interrupt them.

But then, Alma was out there. It wasn't safe for a possum to possum anymore, and so the time had come to play the spellflute.

She tooted a soft note, rising gently, the wand tines shaping the sound into something otherworldly. In a wave, the possums ceased their random errands and turned to face Jasminka. When she was confident she had their attention, she played a traditional Russian lullabye, "Twilight Time," and danced a traditional jig. Motes of green light spiraled around her as she jigged in place, soon gathering in an orbit around her feet. As the possums listened and the song progressed she spun in place, and the lights spun into a circle in a perimeter around her feet.

She played a long, drawn-out note before returning to the flow of the song, and the possums took their cue to approach her. Possums that touched the circle disappeared with a soft pop, and found themselves back at last in their warm possum haven in the grow room poorly hidden in sweet little Cons's machine shop.

Jasminka walked into the bustling, lumpy carpet of possums, for there were so many even taking their turns they were having a hard time reaching the way home. Being herself, she was quite caught up in the dance, and kept at it, meandering through the rich kids' dorms until edge gravity knocked her back in.

She downright nearly dropped her flute into the hole cut in what she would later find out was Hannah and Barbara's floor. A wary possum joey trundled away from the hole and into the welcome light of freedom. Jasminka played a few curious notes until she saw that there were no possums left here to approach, merely a thick dusting of fur and neat piles of possum crap and lakes of pee.

"Very well," she said, "my work here is done. And now, to ask a question..." She typed out a text to Constanze. "R the [two paw print emojis] there?"

"Unsure," replied Cons. "Some evidence, not much. Will keep informed."

"[happy cry emoji] Well find em 2gethr! [heart emoji]! Back soon" She sighed contentedly and pocketed her cell phone.

"Flesh for the Pack," someone said behind her. "What did you do to my room?"

"Hm?" Jazzy said, turning to face Hannah. "Oh, wow, you don't look very well."

Hannah looked like someone had given her a blood transfusion above and beyond how much her body could hold. She was puffy, ruddy-complexioned, and clothed in a garden's worth of plants: sunflowers growing into a half-skirt covering her backside and the backs of her legs, roots tickling her calves; a many-headed Venus flytrap lying in wait for any small meat-thing to come near her hair, as the live plant tied her ponytail up; ivy and moss in pleasing colors woven together to form the rest of her dress. Also, she was floating a foot off the ground.

"You only say that because you've not been recreated in the image of biological perfection," Hannah said, huffing. "Though you've been very busy filling my room with bugs and lizards!"

After a long moment, Jasminka said "Yes."

"I hope you intend to clean this up!"

"I was in the middle of it before you asked me a question. And now, friend, I return to the thankless task at hand." She played a few notes on her spellflute, causing a mop of shining green energy to emerge from the wand-tines. She whistled the lullabye to herself as she swept up possum-leavings.

When she was looking away from Hannah, Hannah smashed her in the back of the head with a blunt instrument.

* * *

As the team had floated into the Scare Hole, Akko and Andrew on one broom, Chariot and the reporters on a second, Chariot cast a spell that conjured a swarm of magical fireflies, casting the entire skeleton-haunted theater in the light of a full-moon night. In the angles of time, the unfocused smoke of the censer first pooled in a tight shell around the magic item, then floated through the still air towards a door nearly seamlessly blended in with the rest of the wall on the ground floor, tickling a rusty doorknob.

"Here," Chariot said, pulling her broom to a stop near the door. She held her breath and opened the door with a telekinesis spell. It took three strong tugs to work the hinges, and the door opened on an endless abyss of what the poet would call starless and Bible-black.

Joanna took a picture. "Neat," she said.

"Anybody else gettin' some weird vibes?" Akko said, trying to sound more cheerful than she was. "Like, uh, that old TV movie?"

"Which one?" Kimberly said, " _Alice's Adventures in the Void of Space After Dying Within 30 Seconds Of Vacuum Exposure_?"

"That one was so messed up," Joanna said, staring into the abyss. "How'd they make the body look so real?"

"I remember that one," Andrew said. "As I recall, they used a green screen and an actress who was on a prescription sleep medication and a propensity for talking in her sleep... and a Mellotron and synth cover of 'Great Gig in the Sky.'"

Akko snapped her fingers. "Right! We're getting sidetracked! And that is... a... bad thing! Come on, Chariot, let's lead the charge into--" She snapped her fingers again. " _The Langoliers_ , that's what I was thinking of!"

"Oh, that one!" Joanna said. "The one Steven King wrote after him and his airplane buddies fell into a space-time hole like this one!"

"There was a book?" Akko said. "I thought that was a documentary."

"If it was the cameraman would'a evaporated," Kimberly said.

"Oh, yeah..." Akko said.

"The angles of time, man," Kimberly said. "We'd be super screwed if--"

"Anyway," Chariot said, "we have an adventure to get to."

"Right!" Akko said.

Chariot flew out into the darkness, trailed by a a dozen or so of the magic fireflies.

After a minute or so she flew back through. "Why aren't you following?" she said.

"We're coming!" Akko said. "We just gotta, you know..."

"Warm up," Andrew said.

"P-u-u-u-u-u-s-s-s-s-s-sy," whispered Kimberly.

"Hey!" Akko said, closing her eyes and flying at the exit, Andrew holding tight onto the broom behind her. "Come back here and say that t--"

Her voice fell as she flew out into the emptiness between rooms and felt the feathery pressure of the void on her skin. Below her, before her, around and above her was an abstract shape of many enclosed rooms, some connected to each other by door, others by window, others at arbitrary points of intersection. The starless black surrounding her seemed to go on forever. The shapes of the buildings, for their massiveness, were as remote and vague as in a dream, lit only by the dance of the firefly-spell.

"Come along," Chariot said, gesturing, and after a moment Akko flew after her.

"This has been... adjacent... to the school... this entire time?" Andrew said.

"And then some," Akko said.

"I knew the spooky feelings I had about this place weren't misplaced."

* * *

At the entrance to the school theater, Wangari took one last moment to check her hair (immaculate) and her outfit (on point). She cleared her throat and hit "record."

"Good evening, Luna Nova," Wangari said into her phone. "I'm your night's entertainment, Wangari, guesting on bass for the Sucy Manbavaran Band--"

Sucy squeezed into the camera. "That's Sucy Manbavaran and the Sucy Manbavaran Band. Trademark pending. We insist on the full name with trademark every time to prevent genericization."

"What she said. Anyhow! Let's have a look-see at some of the magical attendees to this highly impromptu fundraiser. We have some big names both locally and from abroad!" Wangari nudged backwards through the doors and revealed a half-full ballroom. Magically speaking, the theater could have actual theater seating, or swap out for flat ground to host dinner parties and shindigs, like this. The front tables were long and low and packed with what looked like every witch of note, eagerly chattering between themselves or threatening each other with spells or sharp objects. The back half were stocked with adults of varying stripes--teachers, celebrity guests, parents come to visit.

Wangari bumped into Mrs. Manbavaran near-instantly, seated alone but for Paul Hanbridge asleep in her lap and, from the looks of it, having vivid nightmares. Also, he seemed to be sweating out viscous blue glowstick filling. "Mrs. Name-Withheld Manbavaran! One of our high rollers for the date bidding war! Good to see your shadow darken these noble halls once more."

Mrs. Manbavaran lit her pipe. "It's good to be here. Hello, daughter."

"Mother," Sucy said.

"That's a lovely rat you have on your shoulder. I haven't seen your snake familiar in any of the visits I've had to Luna Nova. Why is that?"

"I got bored with it, so I ate it," Sucy said.

"And yet you failed to fill out any more. You'll never have tits at this rate."

"Ah, well. It's good to catch you between spawnings. Maybe you'll make a worthy sequel to me with that ordinary human. I'm sure my dads will love to hear that."

"I'm sure they will. They do love the taste of failures, or else why would you be their favorite?"

"A-a-anyway," Wangari said, grabbing Sucy and dragging her away, "let's see if we can't find any, what's the word... oh, here we go!" She pulled up to a table where sat Lotte's parents sat. For the occasion both were gussied up in the Finnish national costume, Mrs. Jansson in a floor-length dress with cape with a hair-concealing hat, and her father in a short-hemmed tunic with dark trousers and pointy elf shoes. They were color coordinated: dark blue bases with cheery reds and pinks. "Here we have a couple who definitely planned this trip out. Pleased to meet you!"

"Oh, pleasure's all ours!" Mr. Jansson said, shaking Wangari's free hand with enough force to make her shoulder joint pop. "Wouldn't miss our pieni hämähäkki get back on the market!"

"I am certain that her wife is smiling upon her from Chicago," Mrs. Jansson said, holding up a lovely blanket stitched with a geometrically elegant image of a moth and a spider amidst cascades of cards and coins. "I am also hopeful that if Charlotte marries again, she will inform us more than ten minutes before the act."

"I'm sure she will. We'll be sure to get a glimpse of the lucky lady before we take the stage!" Wangari winked and proceeded to another table, conveniently seating Annabel Creme as she read something somewhere on them there internets she had on her phone. "Lookie here, our celebrity of the hour! Annabel Creme, famous author of the unendingly popular Night Fall series!"

"'ey," she said. She wore a black dress with simple silver patterns along the sides and hem.

"Excited to help fund higher education, or whatever this is actually for?" Wangari said.

"It's pretty cool, yeah," Annabel said. "I don't think it was explained to me how the bidding process works?"

"Wing it, baby!" Wan-Wan said. "Next up... oh, hello! I think I've seen you around!"

"You have," Amaranth said, catching herself before she could explain. She wore a sea-blue cloche hat and spaghetti-strap dress and enough gold jewelry to give Mr. T pangs of jealousy. "I may look like a humble student but I am a daughter of a prominent Deep One politician. I am here to show my support. I only hope they accept payment in more gold than they've ever seen in their brief, unsatisfying lives." She doffed a necklace, a knotted black cord cabled through thick gold coins and dropped it on her table. It landed with an alarmingly loud thud.

"I don't think that'll be a problem," Sucy said, reaching to touch the gold; Amaranth swatted her hand away. "Please, I just want to touch it." She reached again, and Amaranth grabbed her by the wrist... then ran her soft, slippery palm down the back of her hand.

"Later," she said.

"I'm intrigued," Sucy said, pulling her hand back and licking where Amaranth's hand had stroked it.

"In other news," Wangari said, dragging off Sucy by the collar, "here we have from the student's section, the amazing twins Ra--"

"Hey!" Daryl Cavendish shouted. "You, News Negro! You missed us!"

"Deliberately!" Wangari shouted, not showing the camera how hard she was flipping her off. "As I was saying..."

To her disgust, Alma interposed herself between Wan-Wan and the Indian twins. She had a striking ensemble composed of the Luna Nova school uniform and a bunch of possum torsos tied or stapled across it. "Can't miss this shit, bitch," Alma said. The phone caught a soft but pointed hiss coming from somewhere just behind Wangari; that would be Captain Christmas sounding his disdain.

"I'm afraid I can't," Wangari said. "Been doing something about the possum incursion, huh?"

"Yeah," Alma said. "Murderin' the shit out of 'em. Givin' the heads to somebody. That whore Jasminka ate a pah I gave her, but she wanted to so that was a fuckin' wash."

"Who's getting the... nevermind, I don't wanna know," Wangari said. "Now please let me have a talk with the--"

"No. Lemme kill that fuckin' possum." She aimed her wand.

"Kill this possum and you'll be shitting your own hip bones for a week," Sucy said, brandishing a flask at her, making sure it was in view of Wangari's camera.

"Get in my way and I'll grind you up like that guy in that movie," Alma said. "And then I'll poison your meat and use you as poison possum bait... bitch."

"Ma-a-aybe we should go..." Wangari said, stepping between the two witches and inching Sucy away from Alma. "Seriously, girl, now's not the time. We have a show to put on."

"Yeah, yeah," Sucy said. She and Alma traded obscene gestures as they worked around the students' tables.

"And oh hey look there's Lotte Jansson and she looks sharp," Wangari said, standing on tiptoes to get a shot of her. Lotte was difficult to miss in the rows of witches in their uniforms or their dressiest dresses. Lotte was the only one wearing a spotlight-white and electric blue ghagra choli with ample golden embroidery. In their infinite wisdom the dress had so many layers Lotte looked like a plush doll of herself, but at least she could wave back.

"And here we are at the stage," Sucy said, patting its elevated floor. "Just about to perform. As you know."

Wangari spoke into the camera: "See you after the auction, you crazy people of Luna Nova. Check the broadsheet tomorrow for more juicy behind-the-scenes details." She waved and hit stop. With her back to the school she finally let her professionally excited demeanor slip. She mouthed the words "Please sweet Great Unnameable One may you smile on tonight's wackiness."  
The two witches climbed on stage where the rest of the Sucy Manbavaran Band had set up: Constanze popping on her headphones safely behind her drum stack and stands bearing Sucy and Wangari's instruments for them. And that was it. Other than Cons somehow deciding that wearing a giant pink poofy dress that made her look like a dessert on Instagram was a good idea. Maybe she was doin' solidarity for Lotte?

Wangari unbuttoned her vest and threw it aside. "Good evening, heroes of Luna Nova and all the wonderful people we have visiting!"

Polite, scattered applause echoed from the guest and teacher tables. The students withheld their approval for the time being. Alma started shouting "Eat my pussy!" and just kept shouting it for the duration of their performance.

"The name is Sucy Manbavaran. This is Wangari, you don't get to know her last name. That there is Constanze Amalie von Braunschbank-Albrechtsberger, P.I. Tonight, minus our usual lead singer for reasons of 'she's going to be competing for a lovely night on the town with a handsome young man...'" Sucy indicated Lotte in the crowd and an obliging goblin in the rafters kicked the spotlight onto her. "Wish her luck, folks." No luck was wished. "And now, in light of the evening's magnificent events..." Sucy shouldered her guitar.

"...if somehow you're not already unbelievably hype for tonight's thrill-a-minute battle of romance and money," Wangari said, playing a soothing bass chord, "allow us to bring you to the heights of ecstasy..."

"Show us your tits!" bellowed Prof. Nelson, brandishing a bottle of Buckfast at the stage from the teacher table. That got some pop from the studentry even as Finnelan dragged her back into her seat.

"Later~" Sucy said. "Fix your pants and your panties in place, everyone!"

Wangari held up her fist and extended her pointer finger. "A-one. A-two... A-ONE TWO THREE FO'!"

* * *

In his dressing room, Frank lay kicked back in his chair, feet resting on the dresser and keeping him balanced. With a little time to himself, he realized at last that Louis Blackwell knew what his dick look like and he knew what Louis Blackwell's dick looked like. This was not sitting well with him.

A lively drum solo interrupted his reverie. It sounded familiar, but he couldn't quite place it until Wangari sang the first line, which happened to be the title: "I Want You To Want Me." Cheap Trick, classic rock, a safe bet for this crowd. Frank nodded along with the beat. Still thinking of Louis, but trying not to think about Louis's dick, he thought instead about what Louis must be thinking of the music.

* * *

Jasminka woke up with a bad headache, but she was between her roommate and a handsome young man, so even though they were all stuck to the wall in blue resin cocoons, that was alright. Their surroundings were vaguely familiar, but something about the bare stone walls and the mildew was throwing her off. "Hey guys," Jasminka said. "How's tricks?"

"Got laid, got kidnapped," Amanda said. "Ups and downs."

"I saw you at the welcome parade!" Jazzy said. "Did the disguise-yourself plan work?"

"It _got off_ to a good start," Amanda said with a heavy wink, "but unless I get to the auction in time it's still half-finished."

"What plan, exactly, was that?" Louis said.

"Well, I was gonna pose as a guy, like you saw, and then I was gonna get bought at the auction, and then after dinner when the sex happened I'd be all 'ha ha, I'm a lady instead! How you like them apples?' You know, for laughs."

"And then what?" Louis said.

"It doesn't matter?"

"It does, though," Louis said.

Before he could continue, Amanda said, "I choose to disbelieve that. You're free to have your own little opinion and I'm free to ignore it. Also, remember I've kicked your ass."

"...you may have, but I'm the one who just had sex with it. I mean yours. Shit!"

"It's cool, I liked that line. Plus: you were good. Was that your first time bangin' someone up the butt?"

"Of course not," Louis lied. "You have to keep your subordinates in line somehow, after all. And how better than with six inches of Blackwell steel?"

"Hot," Amanda said, licking her lips. "Got any favorite stories of anal conquest you can share?"

"A gentleman never kisses and tells."

"Aww. Fair."

"Like he's had more than your lily-white ginger ass," Barbara said from somewhere. She floated through the ceiling like a ghost, leaving a dripping ectoplasmic stain where she entered.

"Oh, yeah, like you didn't invent a way to get even whiter, Barbie!" Amanda said. "Spit on the false queen!" She hocked a loogie at her, which she dodged by staying in place a yard away while the loogie landed silently on the ground a few feet below.

Jasminka had the opportunity to drink in Barbara's new look: as Amanda intimated, Barbara had discovered a means to become even whiter. She'd placed her hair in an elaborate updo held in place with faux-pearl-inlaid combs, and she wore what Jasminka first took to be a small, wedding-cake-themed Rose Parade float and which turned out to be a dress so poofy she should be requiring a handcart to move around. Good thing she could fly now.

"Good for you!" Jasminka said before realizing she'd only thought the last sentence to herself.

"And will you look at that," Barbara said, floating in front of Jasminka. She reached into her purse (which she had) and freed a small, old-ass cigarillo (like her dedushka liked to smoke) from a cigarette case. She puffed on it.

"I'm looking!" Jasminka said.

"I mean at you, Lardy Cake!" Barbara said, exhaling into her face (like her dedushka liked to do). "I'd like to have seen Hannah drag all eight tons of you down here."

"Screw you, bluey, she's a Hostess Sno Ball at worst!" Amanda kept spitting and kept missing. "Shit, I'm too dehydrated to get any range. Anybody got any water?"

"I've got something you can drink," Hannah lamentably said as she crawled out of a hole in the wall next to Louis.

"Christ Jesus, she's got scarlet fever!" Louis said.

"What--no, I'm a vampire now! Like, an alive vampire that wears plants for lore reasons, I think," Hannah said, flashing a mouth full of irregularly-shaped and sharp teeth. Judging by the nicks on her tongue she'd been probing them quite a bit. "Or at least I'm full of blood and can do this." She stood up on the wall and performed what may be described as a dance. "Wait, wait... I think I'm still kind of... what's the word I'm looking for?"

"A spazzy bitch?" Barbara said. Jasminka gasped, Louis flinched.

" _What did you call me?_ " Hannah said, narrowing her eyes at Barbara.

"Disoriented?" Jasminka said, sweating bullets.

"I called you a spazzy bitch," Barbara said, the laughter creeping into her speech, growing more shrill until her last words were a riotous shriek, "like your spazzy bitch little brother who's such a spazzy bitch _he lives at the spazzy bitch hospital for spastics!_ "

Hannah roared and leapt at her, sailing right through and landing like a damp pile of floral laundry on the ground. Barbara tried to take a seated position in her stupid dress, found she was unable to, changed her mind about how she was going to express her disdain and simply flicked her cigarillo at Hannah.

"I don't get it," Amanda said.

"Of course you don't," Louis sighed. "Americans."

"Dude, don't 'America' me. This whole country's on drugs. But not like regular drugs, like drugs that make everything just slightly weird. It's not just the 'crisp' and 'biscuit' thing, it's like you guys don't like Oreos or food that tastes like anything and you liked the Genesis more than the SNES but you call it a Master System because you just can't do anything normal except pound me in the ass so thanks for that taste of normalcy at least!" She tried spitting at Barbara again. "I think that concussion's getting to me."

"Same," Louis said, furrowing his brow in an attempt to intimidate the concussion into getting itself over with.

"Oh, you got hit on the heads too?" Jasminka said. "Concussion Buddies! High five!" She held her hands as far as she could reach, what with the resin and all; after a long, confused moment, Amanda and Louis reciprocated, Louis with the tips of his fingers, Amanda managing a soft but complete up-high.

Meanwhile, Hannah and Barbara had gone for their wands and were trading blasts and curses--magical and regular--back and forth.

A thought escaped the concussion-fog in Amanda's head like a balloon rising from a shipwreck. "Wait a minute," she said. "Jazzy, you have that spell you can cast without a wand, right?"

"Oh. Oh! Right!" She held her breath and cast the spell that made her triple in volume, shattering the resin coating and making a cushioned landing a couple yards down. "I'm fine!" she said, returning to her regular size.

"You got this, Sno Ball!" Amanda said. "Get some help!"

"Yeah, that's my plan, too!" Jasminka said, jogging around the Hannah-Barbara fracas and beelining towards the oak-wood door leading presumably out of this mysterious dungeon. She seized the handle, found the door weighed a ton, and dragged it open, huffing and puffing the whole time. After she got it about wide enough to let her inside, she ran straight into the silent ebon void surrounding the dungeon, floating off with the sure terror of a dream that had suddenly become a nightmare about falling. Falling straight forward, but there was no ground in sight, or stars, or--

She felt a telekinetic yank on her vest, and she was yanked a good distance ahead until she was eye level with Prof. Chariot. "Oh, hello!" Jasminka said. "Phew, that was almost tense."

"Jasminka, are you alright? There's blood in your hair," Chariot said, tapping the back of her own head. Jazzy felt her head and indeed felt the distinct tackiness of dried blood.

"I just got a little conky," Jasminka said. "Everybody gets a few free ones."

"Totally they don't," Kimberly said, taking note of it.

"Jazzy!" Akko said, floating up beside Chariot. "Did you find Diana?"

"I found some possums and then Hannah found me and hit me in the head and kidnapped me and now I'm here."

"Gotcha," Akko said. "Is Diana in there?"

"No, just the Wonder Twins. Barbara called Hannah two bad words and now they're fighting. Oh, Amanda and that nice blond boy from Appleton are in there too! I mean, they were kidnapped."

"No sad clothes? No Diana?"

"Huh? And no."

"Alright," Akko said. "Hang on tight, I'm gonna rescue my buddies! My buddy and Andrew's buddy!"

"He's not really my--" Andrew said, before Akko kicked her broom into gear and he grabbed onto her for safety. She whipped her wand from its holster and aimed at the door. "Hang on, everybody, 'cause Akko's gonna save the--"

The half-open door flung open, damn near off its hinges.

Diana was there, wand aimed at Akko's head. " _Murowa_."

Akko yipped, yanking back on the broom and banking hard to the left to brake. Doing this, she obligingly flew her head directly into the spell; uncontrolled, Akko and Andrew smacked into the wall above the door, both cracking their heads against the dark edifice.

Diana stood still in the threshold, wand at the ready, still as stone.

Time seemed to slow for Chariot.


	7. Crime Loves a Hero

"Paelis Capama!" Chariot said, sweeping her wand across her targets. Jasminka fell for half an inch before the spell caught her in a green triage bubble; Akko and Andrew were bubbled a second later, floating languidly before Diana. Without a word of warning Chariot leapt, soaring from her broom (and kicking it back a good meter or so) and landing on the lip of the threshold; the massive wooden door slammed shut on her, nearly knocking her off the lip and onto the spike pit of irregular angles of dozens of rooms overlapping in space. But she held her balance and she caught the bubble with her fingertips.

Andrew and Akko floated in fetal stillness in the bubble, Akko's broom between them, dark bruises trailing down Andrew's face where he'd struck the wall and Akko's scalp gushing a glittering milky-way spray of blood.

Chariot placed her wand on the bubble and flooded it with as much healing magic as she could muster. Akko's bleeding staunched, at least, though both were still unconscious.

"Teach," Kimberly said, "what the hell are we gonna do now?" She piloted Chariot's broom--as she had been doing, Chariot still being unable to cast flight spells of her own--Jasminka glomping her around the waist and squishing Joanna between them.

"Leave," Chariot said, gently throwing the triage bubble at her students. Jasminka seized the bubble and held it over their heads. "I'll take over from here."

The three student witches stared at her.

"So is this another Christmas suicide thing?"

"Diana's just--" Chariot balled her fist. "Okay. One of you go back and help Akko and Andrew. The other two can help here."

"One two three staying," Kimberly said.

"Staying!" Jasminka said.

"Sta--aw, man," Joanna said.

Chariot called Akko's broom out of the bubble and threw it at Joanna. "I believe in you," Chariot said.

"It's alright," Joanna said, climbing onto the broom and taking the stasis bubble, "not even my mom believed in me. You know I was born in a toilet?"

"Hey, like the Great Makaku," Kimberly said.

"...who?"

"Read some more Japanese comics, bitch."

* * *

Trembling, she swung her wand, the door slamming shut; she swiped it back and crimson bands of energy wrapped across the wall.

"Servants," Diana said.

Hannah bit through the old lightbulb Barbara had conjured into her mouth and spat out the shards and filaments. "Yes, almighty goddess, chosen of--"

"Leave. Our lair is compromised. We will begin early."

"Oh, but!" Barbara said, finished yanking Hannah's hand and forearm out of her mouth and throat, "If we don't wait longer, then--"

"Do I sound like I care?" Diana said, walking toward them. They spent a few beautiful seconds hoping she'd stroke their hair, or hit them maybe, only for Diana to sweep them away with a gale of wind.

"But what about the--" Hannah said. The sound of a mighty spell pounding against the doors cut her off.

"The hounds," Diana said, floating into the air.

"Oh, yeah..." Barbara said. "Those guys."

"Let's run," Hannah said, and the two disentangled and flew (in Barbara's case) and scrambled on all fours (in Hannah's) to the escape routes they'd spent a few minutes sketching up earlier just in case they had to evacuate in exactly this kind of situation because they were nothing if not prepared, or at least huge cowards.

"What was that just now?" Amanda said to the rising Diana. "And what's with all the possum skulls you're wearing?"

Diana answered by pulling a long pair of copper needles from thin air.

Louis contemplated them for a moment. "What are you HGGRKRK" he said as Diana rammed the spikes into his and Amanda's foreheads.

When the deed was done, the Words spoken, Diana let her arms fall limp at her side. Alone, she embraced the pain and let the tears pour, raining onto the floor.

* * *

"Thank you, Luna Nova!" Wangari said, waving at the crowd. Constanze was still playing her closing drum solo, oblivious to the applause from the audience or that Wangari had managed the feat of unbuttoning her own blouse while playing bass. Not that she flashed the audience or anything, but, well, the night does what it wants.

"Eat my goddamn pussy!" said Alma, who was now standing on the table and indicating through the universal hand gesture exactly what she demanded be done.

"What a fine performance," Finnelan said, sliding in front of Wangari, speaking into a carried microphone to establish dominance and carrying a live wand in case that didn't help. She cast a spell at unseen controls inside the proscenium, gently lowering Constanze through a trapdoor. "And now, of course, comes the night's main event. Who's ready to arrange for a magical evening?"

"Alas," Sucy said, "we can only watch from the sidelines as--" Her mic cut, to her disgust. She mouthed the secret phrase and hoped that their twinners were paying attention; she and Wan-Wan carried their gear off the stage, stepping lightly. Somewhere in the dark, Cons kept playing.

"Ahem," Anne Finnelan said, owning the empty stage. "Now, we will begin the bachelor auction with the bachelor half of the equation. Students, who here believes they have a chance at spending an evening with a handsome young man?"

The student body erupted into a raucous cheer and one "Eat my motherfuckin' pussy!"

"Please, down in front," Finnelan said, not quite aiming at Alma to send her the appropriate message. "Ahem. As I was saying: you'd best not just have been an exemplary student but also one with a gambler's instinct. For in order to bid on your date for the evening, you must actually spend your allotment of points. Be cautious, be bold, and of course, good luck." She cast the spell at last, and motes of blue light appeared above each student's head representing their stockpile of points to spend.

Something caught Finnelan's eye.

"Ah, excuse me, Ms. Rajani," Finnelan said, activating a spotlight on Rajani as she was making her way to the hallway outside. "I must ask you stay in the room."

"Oh, I was just going to use the restroom, m'am, I'll be right back."

"No, I'm afraid if you leave the room then your points will be set to zero."

"Oh. Oh! I'll hold it, then," she said, laughing gently, and returned to her seat. She smiled at her sister, then at Alma, seated next to her. "Silly me," she said. "Not going earlier."

"Gotta hold your piss in, huh?" Alma said.

"...yes?"

"Hot."

Rajani inched away from her.

Surely, there was nowhere else in school where a plan had gone this awry.

* * *

Chariot kicked the door into a spray of splinters with the classic one-inch knee strike. She stepped through the hole she made, brushing shrapnel from her hair.

"Showed that door who's fuckin' boss," Kimberly said, daring to poke one of the jutting door bits.

Our heroine Jasminka brought up drag. "That's where me and Amanda and that nice young man were stuck," she said, pointing at a patch of resin on the wall. "And now they're gone. So we should probably start looking."

"Is this the gym?" Kimberly said, doodling a quick mental map of the gym and comparing it to what she was seeing here. Other than the wall holes and blood and emptiness the brick walls were familiar, and the wooden floor had a ghostly sheen of wax and faded basketball court markings.

"I think it is," Chariot said. "The doors used to be that thick to keep students from running away when class was in session. They had their wands taken away to keep them from just magicking out, of course."

"Wait," Kimberly said. "There was that fire, right?"

"M-hm," Jasminka said. "You can still smell good pork in there some days."

"Yes. This was in... 1973, I think? And that was before you could just call someone to handle ghosts. They're quite a handful. If Akko..." She trailed off. If either of the students could take a look at her they would see the darkness cross her face. "Well. I can see why they would make a base here."

"Is that the ghost of a gas leak?" Jasminka said, pointing at a blue mist wafting from a brick knocked from the wall-hole onto the court.

That got her focused. "No, m'am," Chariot said, aiming.

The mist coalesced and the blue mist congealed into a faintly blue-tinted... thing. It was vaguely suggestive of a predatory animal, two long, many-jointed forelimbs with no hindlimbs, a lean, aerodynamic sweep to its shape, its body ending in an uneven fan of meat.

It was a good ten feet tall at the withers. Its foreend opened into a many-lipped maw lined with rotating, chainsaw-like teeth. Its maw was vacuous and so black it made the abyss outside look like a rare perfect April morning.

"Oh," Jasminka said.

The Hound of Tindalos shot an oily ribbon of a tongue from its inner darkness. Chariot cartwheeled to the side, Kimberly hit the floor, and Jasminka got run through the belly. She stood in shock, staring at the sawtoothed tongue as it dug through her and out the other side. "M-m-m-m-miss Chariot, it's swirling my food slide like spaghetti and it feels really weird and sad..."

"Shit!" Chariot said.

"We need round shit, right?" Kimberly said, taking aim at the tongue. "I got round shit." She fired off her wind cutter spell, the green lines slicing through the tongue in three places; the parts burst into blue protoplasm. Conveniently it gummed up the hole in Jasminka, and that gave her the state of mind to run around in no particular order as she panicked, trying to jostle her insides back into their normal shape.

"Eat it!" Kimberly said, firing more wind cutters at the Hound. The spell bit into its bruise-colored flesh and did nothing. It ran at her, maw stretching open ever more. She ran at it, casting a blink spell to teleport right behind it as it charged through her. "Teach, whatta we do?!"

"Two options!" Chariot said, shooting weak blasts to draw the Hound's attention. "One, there's a spell that will let curved things hurt it, not just--" The monster swung a new tongue at her legs, which she hopped over. "--keep it from--" She did the splits, a seized chunk of wall sailing overhead and crashing into the far wall with the splotches of resin smeared across it. "--appearing!"

"And the other?" Kimberly grabbed Jasminka and smacked her.

"Ow," Jazzy said.

"We'll need bones..." Chariot said. The Hound of Tindalos reared and plunged its many-lipped mouth at her. She rolled away; the Hound bit away a chunk of floor, revealing a pile of dusty bones revealed to the light for the first time in decades. "Huh! Can you two keep this thing distracted?"

Kimberly whistled shrilly enough to catch the Hound's attention; it pivoted on its legs until they squelched into its body and inverted which side they were on. "Jazzy, do the thing."

"The what?" Jasminka said.

"You gotta freakin' keep an eye on your character sheet, babe. The biggening!"

"Oh. Oh! Right!" Jasminka held her breath and did the thing where she tripled in size like she did a few minutes ago.

Kimberly grunted with effort as she hefted Jazzy over her head. "Look at this. Look how round she is. Doesn't that offend you, meat monster?"

The meat monster buzzed in agreement.

"Come and get her if you can."

"Wait, am I--"

"The bait!" Kimberly said, going serpentine as the Hound went after her and Chariot hopped into the unmarked witch burial ground to get some artwork done.

* * *

"--long walks on the beach, really?" Finnelan said, raising an eyebrow.

"I mean, it's kind of stereotypical, but... you know, it's neat, right?" Frank said. "The smell of the ocean, the feel of the sand under your sandals, it's just... ahh."

This the witches could hear from the bathroom just outside the theater--the famously scary one, with the 19th-century terlets with the tank held perilously high over the user's head. Sucy was seated on a goblin who was not being paid enough to care, letting Amaranth finish up the deep one disguise makeup. Wangari, blouse still un-buttoned, was pacing around the restroom. "Crap crap crap crap crap," she said. "What're we gonna do? That bitch can't possibly gamble like I do!"

"Well," Sucy said, "there's always the Cyrano de Burgeyac... Berger... whatever it was. You know what I mean. Help her gamble with brain tricks."

"I like brain tricks," Amaranth said. "I've been reading this book..."

Wangari held up her wand. "Is it a book of magic spells? 'Cause I need to think of a broadcast or... no, not a broadcast..."

Amaranth held out her phone. "You can look up something if you'd like."

"Thank you," Wan-Wan said, popping out her own phone. "But I'm packing."

"This is a better phone, waterproof. I got a bunch. Keep it. Big camera, too."

After a moment Wangari accepted. "That's Deep One money, isn't it?"

"Well, we can mine gold from seawater. Money's no object."

"Could you do something about all that plastic shit?" Sucy said. "I can't get ambergris if all the whales miscarry from microplastic."

Ammy shrugged. "Papa says whales have been too uppity since megalodon croaked in the K-T event. We're about due for a mass extinction. I mean, it's not like it hurts us any..."

"Oh, hey," Wangari said, "this should do it." She pressed her wands' tines against her temple and cast the spell: " _Daleki Govor_ , Rajani." A green glow encircled her head. "Mic check, mic check. Rajani, think at me. What're you seeing?"

After a moment, Rajani responded, the sound audible to Sucy and Amaranth. "Hey there. Frank's juggling. He's pretty good at it, actually."

"Janee, I'm gonna need you to think very hard about you and your sister's points. You have a shared pool, right?"

"Yes, actually. We're considered a unit."

"Perfect, yes!" Wangari pumped her fist. "Listen very carefully to the bids and let me do the thinking for you. Just say everything I need you to say and this'll all go accordin' to plan 'cause I'm the baddest gamblin' bitch in Luna Nova... maybe the entire continent. I turn probability into certainty and I make the maddest bank because of it. And tonight my bank will be dick."

"Please, don't get me horny on the job," Sucy said.

"An aside," Amaranth exposited, "you wear that dress well even without a Boyishform(tm) bra. Fortunate seeing as how I needed mine to pass myself off as you."

"I'm aware," Sucy said, voice dark. "I also don't need to be angry on the job."

The lookalikes slid out of the restroom, leaving Wangari to psych herself up into gambling-based heroism.

A grotesque icthyoid abomination lurched out of one of the bathroom stalls, its face made of pincers snapping at her.

"Not now, bitch," Wangari said, pointing her wand at it.

It held its manipulator limbs in the air and scooched back into its stall.

"You can tell I'm not an American police officer 'cause you're still alive. Got it?"

The monster clicked at her through the door.

"Good."

* * *

After an accident, Kimberly figured the best way to outpace their attacker was to run facing backwards relative to where she wanted Jasminka to roll. This let her keep an eye on the Hound of Tindalos, and after Jasminka worked her way through her violent nausea things were looking up. They'd got the little bastard, ironically, running in circles around the gym.

"So," Jasminka said, "I think the centrifugal force and all the throwing up got my spagoots back where they should be! Is he gonna stir 'em up again if he gets us?"

"Maybe," Kimberly said, ducking to the side to avoid the aberration's lancing tongue. "They like the taste of crazy, so if you're already sufficiently seasoned he might just do the actual thing that finishes people off."

"I thought that was their deal, the sweetbread stir surprise," Jasminka said.

"Nope, common misconception. Their deal is wrapping their space tongues around your neck and choppin' your head off. Super gruesome. It's a goddamn mess."

"Please don't get us caught," Jasminka said.

"Tryin' not to," Kimberly said.

On cue, Chariot soared out of the hole, making a picture-perfect superhero landing; raised above her head in her gloved left hand was a bundle of old bones and dried tendons, the Platonic ideal of a B.O.N.E.G.R.E.N.A.D.E. Green sorcerous light flickered inside its osseous cage. "Bad doggy," Chariot said, pitching the weapon in the path of the Hound. "No biscuit!"  
The Hound's vaguely-formed talons cut fissures into the glossy wood of the gym floor as it tried to slow its acceleration, then tried to jump over the B.O.N.E.G.R.E.N.A.D.E. as it clattered on the ground. Neither succeeded; the beast plunged onto the artifact, its mass drawn as if by intense gravity or maybe a vacuum if that's not how gravity works. The Hound's dying noises were foul, not guttural but keening, like brakes an instant before death from overuse, like a fire detector on helium.

Kimberly jumped off Jasminka, who deflated and landed on her belly. "Hello inner ears," Jasminka said. "I'm sorry but we had to get goin' super fast, you know? Can I stand up real qui--"

The Hound of Tindalos ballooned eight times its original size and exploded. The gym and the three ladies in it were coated in glowing blue ectoplasm.

"Ah..." Chariot said. "This gag again."

"I'm suspectin' it ain't a gag so much as some expression of cosmic depravity," Kimberly said, noting to herself to note it in her notebook when she wasn't a mess.

A large lump that was probably Jasminka bubbled.

"Anyway," Kim-Kim said, "if there's any evidence here it's completely ruined by ectoplasm and whatever time whammies got that Hound here. So I suggest we mosey."

A long moment passed.

"I think I'm stuck," Chariot said, demonstrating exactly that.

The fallen brick emitted three clouds of blue mist.

"Hell," Kimberly said.

The Jasminka-lump bubbled a little faster.

* * *

This wasn't Joanna's first time using a spell to follow the ghostly contrails of brooms to find her way back from where she first left, but it was definitely the loneliest and the one with the most bleeding people in stasis tied to her broom by a length of that fancy survivalist cord she'd heard so much about and decided to buy some just in case and whattaya know here she was usin' it. And so she sang showtunes to pass the time.

If Wangari or Kimberly knew she liked showtunes, there'd be reprisals. She wasn't sure what they would be, but they would definitely be, and hurt.

Man, why did the best healer at the school have to go crazy? Now it was up to Horowitz to piece these people together. She could've sworn Horowitz once replaced Wangari's lower body with space robot legs, but given Wangari had normal legs (so far as she knew) either that didn't happen or it was just a bad dream she had once. Like that time she dreamed that Wangari got turned into a kinky robot by--

Wow, she dreamed about Wangari a bunch, didn't she? Especially Wangari that was also a robot?

"Note to self," she said, interrupting her song, "read some ethics books on this subject. And maybe listen to some more Janelle Monae. And maybe ask Constanze if she can--" A tentacle wrapped around her neck, like in her fanfiction, and yanked her out of the sky, also like in her fanfiction, and into the arms of Diana Cavendish, where the comparisons ended (it was usually EvilSorcerer!Sam or Dean at this point depending on her mood). She was surrounded by gas-filled glass mannequins in costumes and, worse yet, Hannah and Barbara.

"Hi?" Joanna said.

"You have someone that belongs to me," Diana said. Her ashen face was streaked with tears; her steely voice had gone tremulous. "I'll be taking her."

"Phrasing...?" Joanna said, faintly feeling like she should be apologizing to someone for stealing their line.

Without a word, Diana conjured a copper spike and drove it between her eyes.


	8. Feared Science

"I am glad that here and now we've come to an understanding," T'Challa said, extending his hand to the handsomely injured N'Jadaka "Erik 'Killmonger' Stevens." With a heavy heart, but understanding eyes, his former enemy took the king's powerful hand and stood. "Now let us cast off our armor and embrace peace."

"Hells yeah," Killmonger said, and the two dismissed their Panther armor. The rigors of battle had shredded their clothes, which fell to the ground in a light dusting of vibranium-infused cloth, leaving them both completely naked, to their surprise.

"Ah ha!" M'Baku (he was here too) said, clapping, "Now there are two men of Wakanda worthy of royal blood! I propose we celebrate this victory in the traditional manner!"

"Yes--the celebration of making love with one's new brothers-in-arms," T'Challa said.

"Hell, I'll try anythin' once," Killmonger said, kissing the mighty T'Challa square on the mouth, the lingering, liquor-like taste of the Heart-Shaped Herb on their tongues. "Yo, why don't you join in, man?" he said to Steven Strange. "We couldn'ta done this without you."

"Well, far be it from me to turn down praise," Dr. Strange said, holding up his delicate, trembling, scarred hands, "but I think we all know this couldn't have happened without the Sorcerer Supreme of Earth, our good friend Wangari--known to the galaxy and beyond as Flatplan, psychic and sorcerous--"

"...no, wait... that sends the wrong image. How about..."

"--known to the galaxy and beyond as Jumpline, psychic and sorcerous prodigy and Earth's greatest defender."

Sorceress Supreme Flatplan, I mean Jumpline, laughed in delight, looking powerful and sexy in her costume that made Tarot, Witch of the Black Rose look like a Franciscan monk. "Oh, I'd hate to intrude on your little celebration, gents. Do go on without me."

"Three's a crowd, but four and up is a party," Strange said, mystically ripping off his shirt to reveal a powerful body sculpted through arcane martial arts. "And when it comes to parties, the more, the merrier." The five hard-bodied superheroes (Cap and Tony were there too and Pepper was cheerleading 'cause she couldn't deny her main that quality of tail when the opportunity presented itself) took the gorgeous and desirably buxom psi-sorcerer into their arms--

"Why am I seeing this?" Rajani said nearby, incapable of looking away from the bisexual-though-gay-by-volume superhero orgy.

"This is my happy place," Wangari said once her mouth was less busy. "It's where I go when I gamble--you know, get in the game, visualize success. The sex is a metaphor for numbers. As long as you're saying the numbers I'm thinking and not what I'm doing, then you'll be--"

* * *

"600!" Alana said, raising her glowing wand.

"Royal penis!" Rajani said. "I mean 800!"

"800 royal penises!" Finnelan said, "I mean ignore that last part. 800 is the number to beat!" She mumbled to herself, "More like beat off, amirite."

It was all academic. Wangari was too damn good at what she did, and what she did was gamble. Some of the witches who had good point totals and a need for a rich blond boy put up their entire fortunes off the bat, but the twins together had points to spare. Those that put it all on the line couldn't keep up with Rajani gradually raising and raising, daring the others to blink. Those less comitted to Frank dropped early. Those that kept up the chase gradually surrendered when they got past their comfort level or ability to bet. Amateurs, the lot of them. It's like most of them had never gambled even once in their lives.

"Do I hear 1,500?" Finnelan said. "Going once. Going twice..." She cast a noisemaking spell and a cheerful alarm rang out. "Sold. Frank, my friend, you will be enjoying the company of Rashmi and Rajani [Name Withheld]. Girls, move to the Victory Table so you may be isolated from your lessers." She helped Frank clib down the stage to the ground, where he did a victory lap past cheering or jeering or consume-my-labia-declaring witches.

The twins stood and offered a short bow. "Good evening," Rashmi said.

"Hello," Rajani said.

"Hey, girls. Pleased to meet you." There was something off, like in how they weren't overly enthused to see him--nowhere near some of the girls who failed to win, who were throwing drink cups and half-eaten food at the twins, who rebuffed the attacks with a basic shield spell held over their shoulders like umbrellas. "So, victory table...?"

A small elevator popped out of the wall, leading up to a small platform now jutting out of the wall, a little round table with three wooden seats next to each other emerging from the platform as if they were spring-loaded inside the thin platform.

"There," the twins said simultaneously. Hand in hand in hand, they led him there.

 _Okay,_ thought Rajani, _we're good now, you end the spell._

* * *

"If you insist," mumbled Wangari, coming to on a floating Japanese-style futon. Man, after the Game of the Black Emperors, gambling at this level of stake--even for a cause as good as getting laid--could let her dissociate from reality entirely as her body and mind went on automatic. In a sense, she was a little disappointed the game had come to an end, at least her part. I mean, especially--

The cold equations, as the author would say, completed in the back of her head. Lotte had a boatload of points, yes, but she was not the only student with as much--and there were some with more. Marito was next, and next to Andrew he was the highest-in-demand of the studs. There were murmurs that he had won the sexual characteristic bingo like Sucy's mom had. Perhaps that was just racism talking--said the lady who was into big black characteristics while also being black--but rumors were powerful things.

If Lotte went all-in right away and someone else with more than her went all-in harder--well, she didn't have any hole cards to bail her out. And she was the one who had been playing Tsar Realms in Vegas, not poker.

 _Son of a bitch._ "Gobbo, make sure nobody interrupts me," Wangari said, re-casting the spell.

"My name's Donny," the goblin said.

"Sure it is," Wangari said. She thought at Lotte very hard. "Jansson, you there? It's me, Wan-Wan."

"Oh, hello!" Lotte said. "I'm here! This dress is really warm and it doesn't bend very well but at least I won't have to share a table with all these witches for much longer. Wink wink!"

"Charlotte Marja Jansson, I need you to listen carefully," Wangari said. "One, what part of the presentation are we at?"

"Marito's summoned up a bunch of scorpions and he's letting them crawl all over him. He's getting very touchy-feely--oh wow, one stung him right on the tongue and he didn't even give a honk! He's so... durable!"

"Okay. Listen to me for a minute. In order to make sure you win him--"

The far wall of the bathroom cracked.

"Sweet Jesus what was that?" Wangari said, dropping off the futon (which disappeared) and landing on her feet. She looked at the crack. It was on the furthest wall from the exit, between the furthest stall and the furthest sink. It was about chest height, like someone had brought down a sledgehammer from the other side of the--

The wall burst outward, like an elephant had half-heartedly kicked it but was also still an elephant so it really did a number anyway.

"Don't go all-in on your first bet but definitely steadily esc--you know what, just do what Rajani did and you'll be fine!" Wangari said, aiming.

"Wangari, what's happening--" Lotte said.

The wall shattered, and a grim figure stepped from the sleep-black nothingness beyond.

"Back in a sec," Wangari said. She narrowed her eyes. In spite of everything she recognized who she was looking at. "Amanda. Was that you, the redhead guy? Were you at least shapeshifted into a guy?"

Amanda cracked her whip. She was sporting a bold new look: thigh-high black boots, shoulder-length black gloves, a purple cat-eared mask, and a skintight purple bodysuit with a pair of obviously fake, globe-shaped and globe-sized tits hanging off her chest, each in its own little boob sock so they could unconvincingly bounce independently of each other. "MEOW, I'M A KITTY," she said.

"That doesn't answer my--"

Another figure stepped out of the darkness. Oh, it was Louis. He was now in a black morphsuit with its face cut off, a pair of pop-out eye glasses, and around a dozen fake breasts in fake breast pockets. Cheap fake wings wobbled on his back. " _Oil_ be seeing you!" he said, throwing a handful of black-colored play gel at Wangari, which she sidestepped without much issue. "Oh, don't... don't move! It's hard to aim with these things on."

"Bomb bomb, have a nice dream," Wan-Wan said, shooting him with a stun bolt and knocking him cold. He flopped forward, a soft crack audible under the myriad of louder cracks as his huge fake rock-hard tits engaged the tile floor.

"Oh, hey, that was pretty good," said... no. No, it couldn't be! And yet it was. None other than Joanna left that darkness, exactly as she'd last seen her besides the plastic Dracula teeth. "Hi, boss. I got kidnapped and--"

"Hey shut up meow!" Amanda said, cracking her whip again. "Seriously don't do that, Diana said not to."

"Wait. Diana?" Wangari said. "You've got 'er on the ropes? Or at least on your radar?"

"It's more like--" Amanda grabbed her, getting an arm over her mouth.

"Shut. The. Hell. Up! About the--" Amanda said.

Wangari cast a telekinesis spell on her whip and yanked it out of her hand.

"Hey!" Amanda said. Joanna wriggled out of her grasp and Wangari trussed Amanda up good and solid with her own whip. "Oh, come the hell on! This ain't cool--" Wan-Wan finished her off by cramming the handle into her mouth.

Exactly how I will leave to your imagination, dear reader. Either way, she opted to be mute for a short period of time.

"Okay!" Wangari said, hopping to her feet. "Where's Diana and what's going on with her?"

"Well--" Joanna said.

A long black flexible something burst from the darkness, just over Joanna's shoulder, and splashed across Wangari's chest. "Oh, come the hell--" Wangari said, before noticing whatever it was had wrapped around her sides and was less a fluid and more of a protean... mass, leading far away into the dark. Yannow, like a tentacle. She managed a terrified shout as the limb yanked her into the void.

After a long moment listening to the silence Joanna said, "Excuse me, can I request she have a robot theme, m'am?" No answer. "...okay..." Sighing, she dragged Louis away by his collar and Amanda by the handle of her whip.

"Hey, I'm conscious and shit!" Amanda said. "Just untie me!"

"Don't wanna," Joanna said.

* * *

"I would demonstrate this special push-up under other circumstances," Marito said, "but I am afraid it would be considered obscene here and now!" He was balanced on a tower of scorpions, each balanced on the tail of the scorpion below, Marito standing on the very tip of the sting of the topmost scorpion, a tower of foot-long scorpions so tall his head was nearly lost behind the proscenium.

"Ladies, this is going to be a fierce competition, I can tell," Finnelan said. "Just to make it extra-fierce, we'll be starting the bid at 200 points. Do I hear--"

"All-in," Lotte said, standing up. She put in a solid 10,000 points straight-up. A litany of curse words and actual curses flew her way. "I'm sorry, I think I have to step out and I'd rather--" She seized. "Phrasing!" she said.

"10,000," Finnelan said, "and with the fancy dress bonus adding..." She checked her phone. "Yes, 25%, that brings her total to 12,500 points. Going once..."

"Fuck you, I raise!" Alma said, bidding 84 billion points. Only now did her point tally visibly dip.

"...pardon?" Finnelan said. "Hang on." She switched her mic off and spoke into her wand: "Seriously, how did she get that much?"

The mathematics teacher answered after a few long moments. "Oh, the points are affected by recentness of... deeds. So because she went around killing those giant rats, and she used animus magic, and she gifted the heads to some one she said needed 'em... yeah, there was a stack overflow." A beat. "I think that was into my tenth pint of Guinness when I thaumoprogrammed the point tally spell and I need at least fifteen to think straight. That's my bad."

"But does it count?" Finnelan said.

"You want I should reprogram everything? Only takes a few hours, Bitchy Bitch."

"Okay, whatever." Finnelan flipped her mic back on. "Bid stands at... eighty-four billion. Going once..."

Lotte winced. "G.G.," she said, and scooted away from the table towards the fashionable Deep One.

"Boo! Boo this witch!" the fashionable Deep One definitely born under the name Amaranth said, pointing at Alma with both middle fingers. Mysteriously, Lotte took her by the arm and dragged her off towards the exit. "And you ain't gettin' off either, pony, if Wan-Wan didn't have your ear--"

"Later!" Lotte said, getting them both out the door.

"Sold Filipino," Finnelan said. "Good luck, kid."

"Luck is unnecessary with skill in play," Marito said, his scorpions lowering him to the first line of tables. He stepped across the table, deftly avoiding any plates and cups, and from there hopped to the second line, heading towards Alma. Witches swooned in his wake and eased up on the smack-talk and throwing, for swearing at Alma seemed like a bad idea. And, at the very least, she wasn't going to pull that stunt on any of the other handsome lads.

Marito stopped in front of Alma and knelt, bowing his head. "Young lady, I am pleased to be your company for tonight."

"Whatever," Alma said, "at least you don't got AIDS like that guy." She grabbed his arm and yanked him off the table.

"Wait, Frank has acquired immunodeficiency syndrome?" Marito said.

"Looks like he does, eh? Eh?" Alma said.

Marito frowned. "I would prefer you not joke about such things, m'am."

"Fuck you."

* * *

"Fuck _me_ ," Kimberly said after a hellborne miracle failed to happen within three seconds of her last statement.

Chariot struggled to pull free of the houndmuck. If she was having trouble, Kimberly and Jasminka were doomed.

The first of the three mists coalesced into a new Hound of Tindalos, this one three-legged and angular, swept like an arrowhead. Its maw was a great gash stretching diagonally across its back.

"Any plans, boss?" Kimberly said.

"You have your wand in hand?"

"I do, yeah. Jazzy, you?"

The Jazzlump bubbled intermittently.

The second Hound appeared, shaped like a sail and just as thin, with two in-line legs with toe-blades invoking skates. Its sides split non-metaphorically to reveal its maws, which should have let them see straight through the beast but instead only revealed two pathways into darkness.

Title drop.

Not this title (we're still at two), but a title nonetheless.

Chariot grabbed her wand--

* * *

Lotte seized. "Phrasing!" she said.

* * *

"Listen carefully. Blossom... Freshness... _Maximized_!"

Kimberly repeated the spell, pouring her mana into the basic clean-yo'-self spell. The Jazzlump bubbled one last time.

As the third Hound appeared, the three trapped witches burst free from their ichorous bonds. Kinda. Sorta. At least they were mobile.

"Teach, how long does the other thing take? The hurt 'em with--" Kimberly said, interrupted by the third Hound's multiple razor-ribbon tongues not quite spearing her. "PLEASE SAY LESS TIME" she said, ducking and weaving and slipping as the turret-like Hound sprayed tongue after tongue at her. It was a good eight feet tall, with layers of mouths stacked unevenly on top of a one-legged, many-toed limb that kept it anchored on the gooey floor.

"Less time," Chariot said, charging the spell up on her wand's tines. "Jasminka, keep them busy!"

"Mm'mmrmt muuu!" Jasminka said, casting a spell between the two other Hounds. Several plump white beasties appeared, shaped like fat bowling pins with stubby little legs and smiling, whiskered headlettes. The two unbusied monsters instinctively began eating the hell out of them, and Jasminka kept conjuring more as they gobbled up their beast feast.

"Godspeed, little shmoos," Chariot said. "On the count of three!"

"Why didn't we do this earlier?!" Kimberly said, liberating the broom from the ooze and surfing it in the air, the turret-Hound's flicking tongues nibbling at the hem of her skirt and the ends of her hair and closing in by the second.

"Three! _Du ella viṣayagaḷa svarūpadallide; adu bāhyākāśa mattu samayada bhāgavāgide! Beḷeyalu mattu_ \--"

"You gotta be fuckin' kiddin'--" Kimberly said, just as the turret Hound pierced her through the chest with one of its tongues, the barbed tip popping out the other side and latching in. The broom flew off without her as the Hound fiddled around with her insides, groping her lungs, caressing her spleen--

"-- _innū beḷeyalu: Modalininda koneyavarege bīyiṅg-adu_ \--"

Jasminka yipped and shot an orb-shaped blast spell at the tongue in Kimberly, letting her drop to the floor and attracting the monster's attention. Without a continual upwelling of shmoo to distract them, all three of the Hounds turned their eyeless gaze upon the vilely round and soft-looking Jazzy. "Gulp," she managed to say.

"-- _jīvanada niyamavāgide. Bēre yāva kānūnu irabēku?!! Elimeṇṭari yantra jīvana! Ia! Shub-Niggurath!!_ " Chariot flung the spell into the center of the three monsters, the spell bursting into winding tendrils of sorcerous code that sliced into the Hounds of Tindalos. They squirmed, impaled on the spell; when it visibly faded they were left seeming... a little bit more real, somehow.

"Can we... can we kill them now?" Kimberly said, feeling her chest to make sure her heart was in its usual place. No, it wasn't.

"Think round!" Chariot said, soaring into the air and bringing down the curved edge of her bootheel onto the turret Hound, crunching its multi-layered head into itself.

"Kimberly spell go," Kimberly said, trudging ahead and spraying wind cutters at the Hounds, slicing long rents in their bodies that bled protoplasm.

"M'mmmph?" Jasminka said.

"Shut the hell up and start hurting them," Kimberly said.

"Mm mmrm mm mm mmm-mme?" Jasminka said.

"Rounder is better!" Chariot said, tripping up the arrowhead Hound and punching it over and over in the underbelly, the gentle curve of her knuckles round enough to count. The sail-Hound twisted its body and spat tongues at Chariot, which she dodged; the tongues lodged in arrow-Hound instead. Turret-Hound flicked its probing members at her, but Kimberly sliced them with wind cutters before Chariot could be impaled.

"Mm mmk!" Jasminka said, stretching her legs.

"Sure, whatever," Kimberly said. "Actually, wait, teach, could you get one of them shooting over here please?"

Chariot positioned herself in the firing arc of the sail-Hound, and it obligingly struck her. She blocked the attack with the edge of her forearm, twisting her arm just so that the tongue lanced Kimberly through the chest. She used a TK spell to pop her heart back in place--it took a little trial and error to seat it where it used to be, checking it against a lifetime of body memory--and then cuttered it off, sealing the wound. "Okay! Okay, I'm good to go."

"Mmr m mmo!" Jasminka said, jumping into the air and doing that thing she did, landing on the ground with a soft splash of Tindalos plasm.

"I got you," Kimberly said, lining up a shot and conjuring a blast of gale-force wind that sent the Russian witch skipping like a stone over the layer of plasm. Chariot hopped out of the way and gave the Hounds half a second to realize how they were going to die.

Jasminka, the roundest thing in the room by far, crushed them like Play-Doh sculptures. That exploded into blue Fruit Gusher jelly. Three times the amount of Fruit Gusher jelly that a single Hound did.

After a very long moment to make sure no more hounds were en route, Kimberly said, "Alright. So let's recharge our mana and get cleaning. And then, maybe, we can actually help find the culprit... and stuff."

"That's the spirit!" Chariot said. "We've got this. We have a little time."

* * *

Lotte peeked into the girls' bathroom. "Hello?" she said. "Goblin?"

The goblin looked up from an antique issue of Warlock Box Bi-Monthly. "What?" he said.

"Did you see who made that giant hole in the wall?"

"I wasn't lookin'," he said, returning to his degenerate porn.

"Is Wangari okay?" she said.

"That's the brown one?" The goblin chewed one of his nails. "No, I think she got kidnapped."

"Down the hole?!"

"Yeah, sure."

Lotte ducked out of the bathroom and blocked it with her body. "This is bad. I think Diana's problem just got a lot worse than mine."

"Lotte, do I have to remind you to treat yo'self?" Sucy said, arms crossed, eye narrowed. "This took a lot of effort to set up and you just burned it by daring Fatty to go all-in harder than you could."

"...because Wangari was kidnapped?"

"Details! People get kidnapped all the time. She'd badass, she can work her way out."

"But Diana doesn't do anything by half. If she's kidnapped Wangari... I don't even want to know what could be happening right now. Water torture, tickle torture, kitten torture..."

"What does that involve?"

"A box of kittens being just out of reach and the kittens are asleep or not interested and it's the worst."

"Lame. Now let's turn back around and enter the cafeteria and chill out, because this situation is guaranteed to resolve itself without us having to smear our makeup." Sucy turned on her heel and marched to the door and attempted to open it. Attempt being the keyword. After bracing her legs on either side of the frame and pushing against it with all her feeble Strength-was-my-dump-stat might she couldn't budge it the width of a hair. She fell onto her butt, panting. "This is normal... this is... school... security... because... reasons..."

There was no window to avoid lookie-loos from getting most of a free show even though all shows were free, so Lotte put her ear to the door and listened instead, her eyes growing steadily wider, even accounting for the glasses giving her the bug-eyes thing.

* * *

"Next on our list... that redhead, whatever their name was. Come out, you." Finnelan gestured vaguely.

A figure in a body-concealing cloak stepped onto the stage.

"Going fancy for his entrance, I see," Finnelan said.

"Mommy, why can't I see his face?" Maril said. She was still ruddy-skinned from running around in the late-winter air soaking wet from the shower.

"Because his hood is up, child," Daryl said.

"Make it stoooop!" she said, bursting into tears.

"Just give it a moment," Daryl said, slipping her child a Xanax which she dutifully ate. Maril, thankfully, was so far into her cups she had entered the drunken-crying phase of her blood-alcohol levels. This was merciful because she cried without making a noise and played her games of five-finger filet in absolute silence.

The figure on stage stood still as a statue; in silence to match Daryl's better daughter, Barbara Parker rose from the floor, just as Hannah England somewhat less quietly dropped from the ceiling in a shower of debris, landing with more or less feline grace. The figure flicked their head back, and their hood fell aside.

"Diana Cavendish...?" Finnelan said. "Oh, guests, this is our star pupil, Diana Cavendish. You may recognize her as one half of the team that helped prevent World War III recently. You're welcome."

The audience applauded, money-bringing guests and teachers and students (bar one, who preferred to shout her apparent catch phrase) alike. Daryl stood and shouted a few words of encouragement. When it died down. Diana mumbled a spell, and far away, very far away, a dusty but reasonably modern jukebox loaded up an MP3 uploaded with **THE POWER OF BLACKEST MAGICKS.**

Dutifully, Hannah and Barbara removed Diana's cloak and stepped back, Hannah trying to sneak in a whiff of the cloak's underarm in case it smelled like Diana. (It did not, though she pretended it did.) Diana was dressed in her uniform, as expected, a wand in either hand. The song played, and she danced, her movements subtle, gentle, mostly cribbing from belly-dance as the main movements were in her hips and abdomen, her wands tracing a glittering red trail in the air.

"Do you think her going missing was a sort of... what do they call it... alternate reality game?" Headmistress Holbrooke said, just above a whisper, to Pisces.

Pisces hopped out of her bowl and into a bowl of vodka, then back, her little tie flapping in the air. She blew a little bubble.

"You can't be serious," Holbrooke said. "That much black magic? The school would catch on fire if they..."

The song suddenly gained a few more very intense instruments, and Diana brought her wands together. The spell concealing her appearance ended.

She had neatly trimmed her uniform to expose her midriff, replaced her skirt with a longer, faux-leather one raided from the costumes in the back, and adorned her head with a tiny silver tiara stained with her own blood (not that anyone here would have known, though the students up close might've seen where she had bitten and scratched herself over the past day, some of the wounds still raw and bright). A halo of small, glistening-white animal skulls orbited behind her head. An insignia was smeared across her face in ashes, a black circle looping from her lips to her forehead, eight long lines emanating from it.

Everyone with any familiarity with witch religion knew whose symbol she wore. Many who had no familiarity had nonetheless seen enough Warhammer to know what it also meant.

"Beasts who have congealed where the hand of Death is stayed by Time that Life may propagate, you who breathe and breed til the Master's hand moves over you, you are in the presence of the Last Daughter. Everything you now do is the delirious act of a dying mind; the end is come and no dawn will blight the Earth again. _Ia! Azathoth d'surik_!"

The spell completed and a crimson shockwave burst through the air. From the otherspace where a previous iteration of this room had been laid to rest emerged Diana's servants in all their ridiculous splendor.

And behind her, suspended upside-down on an upside-down cross, was a comatose Akko.

"Reap them all," she said, pointing her wand at the crowd.

" _Where_ is my _mind_?" the pistoleer clothes ghost said, aiming her gun.

* * *

"You hear somethin'...?" one of the cyclopes said.

"It's a witch problem, not a fairy problem," the head chef said. "Now make sure that cryothrower and flamethrower are ready! We ain't got all goddamn night to make the world's largest creme brulee by volume and not area!"


	9. Good Die Stranger

Annabel Creme looked up from her phone and, little did she realize, down the barrel of a gun until the clothes ghost pulled the trigger. Against physics, the sound hit her ears first, the discharge of a magic firearm; next she saw the magic bolt burn free of the barrel, towards her, on target to hit her between the eyes.

Time slowed. Her muscles were rigid. Deer in the headlights. This was it. In a moment of Mexican magical realism, time would soon stop, giving her just enough time to compose the rest of her tenure as Creme in her head, an epic tale to be read only by herself and whatever god was doing her a solid. Okay, dum-de-dum, where were you at this morning--

A possum she had failed to notice was eating her meat pie (that she ordered just to see if it was safe to eat) stood up, noticing her distress. The magic bolt struck it in the back, and because it was a spell and not a bullet it killed the opossum and left her completely alone. The majestic beast fell face-forward into the remains of her pie.

Awestruck, humbled, Annabel picked up the beast, cradled it to her chest, and closed its eyes. "Vaya con dios, criatura blanco."

Finnelan turned the green microphone-shaped aura into a generic mana bolt and blasted the gun out of the gun ghost's hands, just as the other ghosts pounced from the stage into the students' tables, red-lined weapons in hand. A great deal of screaming and cheering and a barrage of protective spells turned the front of the theater into a rave. Diana's still-living underlings gathered around her as the lead clothes ghost groped for her dropped gun, mumbling her catch phrase.

"Diana, what is the meaning of this?" Finnelan said. She counted Diana's accomplices while her best student responded: Wangari, one of Wangari's little sidekicks, that one boy, Hannah and Barbara, by the Triple Goddess not Amanda too... six minions strong. Oh, and Akko's hair was soaked with blood and a nasty bruise was visible well off her temple.

"Performing my ultimate duty, Finnelan," Diana said. "This world has suffered too long. Let it burn."

Finny re-cast the microphone spell. "Friends and visitors, please enjoy the magical light show we've prepared. Teachers, please be aware a Code Claremont is in effect, which is nothing to worry about, friends and visitors. Thank you."

Diana tilted her head in the teacher's direction and Amanda, Wangari, and Hannah attacked.

Nelson fished her shotgun out of magical storage. "So, uh, what's a Claremont mean again?"

"Student under mind control!" Holbrooke said. "Standard procedure is to have a loved one or best friend talk them down--and of course we lack both. Pisces, what kind of black magic did you say you detected?"

Pisces turned herself around 360 degrees.

"Mother Mormo, no," Holbrooke said. "Alright--response teachers, protect our non-magical guests. Repair teachers, join me in working to counteract the barrier spell. And problem teachers... please put the gun away, Nelson."

"You ain't the boss of me," Nelson said, pumping the gun and ejecting a live round because it was already loaded and ready to fire. She bent over to pick up the dropped round.

Up at the victory table where sat the five victors, Marito stood up. "I'm sorry," he said, "but we must--"

Alma drove her wand into his back, blasting him point-blank with the strongest stunner she knew. His muscles locked tight and he fell, rigid, into one of Alma's clammy arms. "Miss... what have you..." Marito said.

"What in the blue hell?!" Rashmi said. Frank leaned away from Alma.

"Shut the hell up and be pretty," Alma said, patting Marito's head. She stood on the edge of the winner's table platform, arms to the sky, and intoned a conjuration to whatever forces of darkness were convenient. In the pile of crazed students fighting ghosts, there appeared a dozen or so assorted new tormented spirits in their midst, bent on, as the short-lived-Public-Enemy-no.-1 once said, pestering the everloving hell out of the living.

"Should we be doing something...?" Frank whispered. A brief discussion with the twins ensued.

"Boo!" said Lotte's papa, standing up and vocalizing at the winners' table. "That's low even for a heel!"

Mrs. Jansson cleared her throat. "I believe this is part of the show, dear."

"I know, but I'm getting into it! It's finally spicing up! And my little spider not winning has got me all nettled."

"Well, you do get nettled," Mrs. Jansson said, smiling.

The sword-wielding clothes ghost sliced a witch's fingertips off.

"Ah, and look at this!" he said. "What heels! Heels, the lot of them!"

Mrs. Manbavaran puffed on her pipe, which she'd brought in, knowing nobody would dare ask her to stop. "I think those witches are in fact fighting for their lives," she said, stroking Paul Hanbridge's short, luxurious hair.

"I augur cold death," he said. At least he'd stopped spitting up glowing blue protoplasm, though he was still staring unfocused at nothing.

"Me too," she cooed, stroking his chin.

* * *

"I'd just like to voice my objection to this plan," Kimberly said from the front of the broom. "This is clearly a case where we call in outside help and report on the aftermath."

"Oh, you just haven't been almost killed enough," Chariot said. "Get a few near-death experiences in you and this goes from unpleasant to being downright necessary just to get to sleep."

"Mmph?" Jasminka said.

Between the three of them they managed enough Blossom Freshnesses to get mobile. Getting dignified was, alas, out of the question, especially since they had to save energy to clean the floor just to locate the Censer of Dreams Undreamed, much less clean it and its fuel enough to burn again. They'd wasted quite a bit of time, but at least now the smoke was curling sharply upwards, towards a long, arched construct emerging from the lumpy sea of roofs. There was no door, but a wide-open hole, and as they approached, Lotte and Sucy Manbavaran in fish-girl makeup hopped through, clutching Lotte's broom as it emitted an adorable little umbrella-parachute spell. At some point Lotte had ditched the fancy dress for mobility purposes.

"Hello, Ms. du Nord!" Lotte said.

"Who's your tailor? I must have their name," Sucy said, snickering.

"What's the situation?" Chariot said; the three-woman broom and two-woman umbrella each locked in place as they reached the same altitude.

Kimberly and Lotte filled each other in.

"Son of a bitch!" Chariot said, snapping her finger.

"How exactly are we gonna get in there, then?" Sucy said. "We threw some disenchantments at it but nothing took. Sucy, I mean Lotte had a chat with the door spirit, but he couldn't budge even if he wanted to. I suppose I could try melting our way through..."

"No, no," Lotte said. "Let's try it the soft way. According to the door, Andrew wasn't with them! Maybe the Censer can point us to him!"

"That's an idea," Chariot said, raising the artifact. "Does anyone have--"

Sucy felt around in her dress for hidden pockets and with a deft underhand throw tossed a lock of hair into the flames. They sputtered, then pointed elsewhere in the exotic otherspace. "You're welcome, and thank you for not asking questions. Now, let's book it, we probably don't have a whole lot of time."

* * *

"Empujar!" Amanda cast, her whip flashing with green light as it struck Finnelan. The force spell carried along its length sent her flying back and onto the first row of students' tables, which had become abandoned in the last few minutes of fighting; she broke straight through, what plates and cups and their contents that hadn't already spilled or been thrown off in the initial battle piling up on her sides.

"Ow," she said, struggling to raise her head. One of the clothes ghosts stood over her, a prop scepter in hand.

"Be a debaser," scepter ghost said, raising it over its head.

"Twenty years too late," Finnelan said, shooting him with a quartet of magic missiles. Hey, gotta take inspiration where you find it. The force spell sent scepter back against the wall. She followed it up with a good ol' classic fireball, punching him straight through the stage and into the gloomy... sub-stage? What the hell would you even call it?

Behind her she was aware that the entire theater was in an uproar. Most of the students were pitching in on a shield spell blocking off the normals and themselves, a handful of braver or more reckless witches and guests joining in the problem teachers in trying to combat the clothes ghosts and Diana's minions and the never-ending stream of mooks that fatass was calling in. It was like the world's most disastrous game of Gauntlet.

"Perkele!" Mr. Jansson said, smashing the sword clothes ghost with a glowing table. "Behave yourself this instant!"

Right behind him, Mrs. Jansson was fast at work tying and untying knots in that table's cloth. She chanted a spell: "Kuu naiset, siunaa valtavaa aviomieheni tässä epämukavassa taistelussa."  
A trio of cackling specters hefted a clothes ghost into the air and dropped him at the couple. "Now there's a hole in the sky," the sword-bearing clothes ghost said, bracing to stab a hole in Lotte's mom. His(?) plan was interrupted by a curtain of lightning that struck it at six points and sent it twitching to the ground.

"There is now," Mrs. Manbavaran said, her fingers still smoking from the especially potent casting. "Wasn't that a magnificent strike?" she said to her date.

Paul Hanbridge shuddered in her hands. "Mrs. Mabavaran, I think there was something wrong with the--"

She held him close and breathed a cloud of liao into his face, re-upping him just enough to get his expression glazed and his mouth a-babbling. "Nothing yet," she said, taking his hand and dancing under the blast of a clothes ghost with a wand. As if by instinct Mr. Hanbridge landed a spin-kick to the ghost's chest without missing his next step in the dance. Not that it did more than kick in her dress, but it looked cool.

"Fuckin' die already!" Nelson said, pumping her shotgun one-handed, throwing it into the air, catching it one-handed, and shooting wand-ghost in the brainpan. The pellets passed through its absent face and whizzed past Prof. Badcock's head.

"Mormo's tits, Nelson!" Badcock said, blasting the witch-dressed clothes ghost with an ice spell that did little more than give it a spooky coating of ice that cracked as she moved. "It didn't work ten shots ago, why would it work now?!" A trio of imps grabbed her wand-arm and dragged her off, spells firing off at nothing in particular as she struggled to escape.

"I'm wearin' 'er down!" Nelson said, swinging the butt of her shotty at the ghost's head and getting the butt covered in ectoplasm for her troubles.

"Won't you please run over me?" the wand ghost said, blasting her in the chest with a hex that dragged her to the ground as surely as she'd had weights tied to her tits.

"Frick," Nelson said.

"Good luck!" said Daryl Cavendish from behind the magic wall protecting the non-combatants.

All this happened within a few seconds of Finnelan climbing to her feet. Then Amanda hopped down, wrapped her up with her whip, and with it, threw her into the under-stage. Wangari and Hannah landed next to Amanda. "Nice shot," Wangari said.

"Fuck you," Hannah said, "we'd be stuffing and mounting her now if you'd let me take the lead."

"One, ew, two, really? She deserves all that? Beat her up, sure, but she's definitely in the tough-but-fair camp, in my personal experience of course."

"In your experience you're dressed like some kind of hoodie-wearing degenerate... one of you people," Hannah said, spitting at her.

"Three," Wangari said, straightening her hood and looking her dead in the eye, "this was the closest to Spider-Gwen I could get with the costumes we had to choose from. And Diana won't let me customize more because, I dunno, she won't. Oh, right!" She waved at the hole and sealed it over with magic webbing. "There, now she won't bust in on us unannounced. See that? Tactics! I got tactics, what do you have?"

"Diana Cavendish's undying love and devotion," Hannah said, looking up at the stage.

"Four, do tell me what you mean by 'degenerate one of my people,'" Wangari said, cracking her knuckles.

On stage, Diana, Barbara, and Joanna were gathered in a half-circle around Akko's crucifix, hands out but not quite touching (to Barbara's dismay). Diana felt a certain chill gladness that at least the red one wasn't up here. The blue one at least had some degree of propriety. As the three witches chanted their spell, a great red symbol burned itself into the air a foot or so in front of Akko, assembled like a painting whose canvas was air. Louis sat down and waited, wishing he had his phone.

Alma was still chanting up her own spell, calling up more spirits where they would be least convenient, delighting in the sheer annoyance she was causing.

"Alright," Frank said. "Count of three?"

"Count of three," Rajani said.

"One," Rashmi said.

"Two..." Rajani said.

"Three!" Frank said, and they picked up the Victory Table and rammed it at Alma. They caught her off-guard and sent her belly-flopping a story and a half onto tile floor.

"Ow, fuck," Alana grumbled into the ground. "The fuck didn't you guys help?!" she said once she spit out some tile and pieces of teeth.

The bestiary of spooks she'd called from the ether responded by yattering about nothing in particular. Chaotic Evil types, you know?

"Fuck all you too," she said, right before the table landed on her.

"Too much?" Rashmi said.

"Making up for lost time," Frank said, brushing his hands and stepping away from the yawning abyss. "Now, what else can we--"

A clothes ghost armed with a red-lined paper moon landed where Frank had stood a moment before. They drew the paper moon taut and said, "Her brain's on fire."

"That... uh, wasn't us?" Frank said

Paper moon ghost was upon him.

* * *

"Journalistically speaking," Kimberly said, "I think this is the place." She leaned forward on her broom like a racer and flew towards the gaping hole blown in a room that floated free of the rest of the roommass, the free-floating and gently rotating cube emblazoned with the red scrawl of the Crimson King.

"W-wait a moment!" Lotte said, holding on to Jasminka's wand--"PHRASING!" she shouted.

"Phrasing what?" Kimberly said, bringing the broom and drag-alongs to a halt. "Not that this is any time but I'm seriously concerned that you may have a condition of some sort. Why do you just do that?"

"I... well..." Lotte chewed on one of her knuckles. "Just that, well, some things sound worse than they are, and I guess..."

"Like what, what about that sentence I just said sounded worse than what it was?"

"I... don't know?" Lotte said.

"When this is over and done with we're taking you to get your brain looked at. Or maybe getting laid will fix it up."

"Good luck with that," Lotte whispered.

"Getting your brain looked at, or getting laid?" Kimberly said.

Lotte's answer was interrupted by Chariot casting Luna Lana at the entrance to the floatcube, a nest of curses guarding the entrance dissipating in a flash of light. "Good call, you two," Chariot said. "That took a moment to decipher. Good time to get some banter in."

Kimberly bit her lip, regret that decision immediately, spat goop onto the roofsea, and brought the broom in to park in the floatcube.

The floatcube had no more gravity inside than it seemed to have outside. The interior was full of drifting eldritch tomes from the library, including the Necronomicon in Luna Nova library binding, the kid's-book binding with the smiling, bespectacled jack o' lantern on the spine. (There had been a mix-up when the text had to be re-bound following a small apocalypse the school was, by judicial ruling, totally uninvolved with.) Besides the floating books, there were floating bodies...

"Andrew?" Chariot said. Andrew was still in the triage bubble, which was moving like the world's least-interesting pinball through the open space of the floatcube.

"Is that Jo-Jo?!" Kimberly said, pointing at a glassy-eyed Joanna floating nearby. "Shit on a shingle, they got her." She kicked off the broom and floated to her partner. "Don't worry, Jo-Jo, mama's here for--" She then saw Wangari, half-lidded and drooling a little and floating nearby. "--oh dear God. No, no, not you..."

Chariot wiped her hands off on Louis's shirt and seized one of the books. "Grab a book. If any of you are up for casting a healing spell, Andrew's gonna need it. I'm figuring this out and shutting it down."

"Coolio," Sucy said. "We all notice this is the theater, right? Like, ours?"

"Now that you mention it..." Lotte said.

"And we're all hearing the drums, right?"

The five strained their ears 'til they heard, for a few seconds, a faint drumming. Then a faint crashing.

* * *

Finnelan skipped across the ground once, twice, and came to an approximate halt when she crashed into a drum set and Constanze still using that drum set. Finnelan took a moment to try and appreciate the sight gag, but realized having an elbow and part of her upper body in a drum just wasn't all that inherently funny. ... Oh, right.

"Ms. Albrechtsberger?" she said. "Are you alright?"

Cons climbed free of the drum-pile and pulled off her headphones. She held her cupped hand up to her ear.

"Are you alright, Ms. Albrechtsberger?"

Constanze nodded.

"Good to hear. I don't suppose you have something that's good against ghosts, young miss?"

Cons rooted through the ruins of the drum set and yanked a Stanbot free from a mess of cables. A holographic inventory screen hummed into view just above it, and the little witch swiped through the pages in an intent search.

Somewhere not far away a door opened and that one fish girl... wait, was it that one fish girl? There was something off about her, something Finnelan couldn't place until she spoke. "Hrm, so they paid the gravity bill for this pa... oh, hey there," Sucy said. "Things sucking pretty badly out there?"

"Why the hell are you made up like--and why do I care? Mormo's tits, this is a mess." Finnelan worked a crick out of her back. "But yes, it's awful out there. I don't suppose you have the rest of your friends with you? The ones that weren't kidnapped?"

Lotte ran in, wand at the ready. "I'm here, professor! Prof. Chariot thinks Diana's forcing a semi-solid astral projection out of all the people she kidnapped, so her and Kimberly are--"

"Fixing it?"

"Yes, m'am."

"Fantastic. Are you ready to fight a pack of unruly spirits, Ms. Jansson?"

"Yes, m'am! That's my specialty!" She performed a few voice exercises.

"And Ms. Albrechtsberger, are you..."

Constanze made a low grunt and twisted a knob on a small, yellow pistol attached by a wire to a metal-reinforced fanny pack of some sort. The device made a throaty electronic whine. Her Stanbot carried a hubcap-shaped device, also construction-equipment yellow, with a remote control attached by length of cable held in its... teeth? Manipulator mandibles? Robots, man.  
"Some sort of project of yours?"

"Nineties surplus," Constanze said, taking aim at the webbing blocking off the entrance to the theater. She squeezed the circular trigger and fired a twisting proton stream into the webbing, withering it away with a few moments of firing. Not that she would say it aloud, much like she said practically nothing aloud, but she was getting a little bit damp. She gestured for the others to follow, and scooted ahead in her giant cupcake-top-shaped skirt.

* * *

Diana dared look up at Akko, fixed in place on that cross, still asleep, still breathing. The red Sign was nearly complete, its un-glow casting a gory light across her and her servants and Akko. It would be done soon and the work would be out of her hands and it could all fall into place and happen and she would be done. Done at last. Let it end. Father, may it all end.

The battle of the theater was steadily turning against the protagonists. Nelson was predictably the first to fall, hurled into the barrier keeping the mundanes and spellbreakers and Diana's family safe by a mostly-head, many-armed whatsit Alma had called up. There had been a brief resurgence against the dead and otherworldly when a bunch of possums stumbled their way in, but however much they hissed or stayed still or pretended to die they could do little more than distract the imps.

Badcock blasted a fangly silverfish out of the air. "Stay down, dammit! I was supposed to be back in my room by now and getting--woah!" The wand-ghost zapped her in the hand, and she dropped her wand, which a rapidly-scooching slug stole with its eyestalks and carried away. "Someone help!" she said, chasing after it on all fours.

"Just a moment!" Mr. Jansson said, swatting a specter away with the enchanted table before gun ghost fanned the hammer on her revolver and blasted it to pieces. "Oh. Maybe a moment more." Wand ghost zorched him with a curse that doubled his height. "Oh. Oh ho! Now we're getting..." He flopped onto his face, for the spell only boosted his size without any of the riders that would've made it a buff and not left him with insufficiently powerful muscles, bones, lungs, and heart.

"No!" Mrs. Jansson said, lying down on her husband and casting a high-intensity buff spell to keep him going. "Breathe, breathe, breathe..."

"Working on it," Mr. Jansson said, gritting his teeth.

Mrs. Manbavaran and Paul Hanbridge were having the best luck, Paul handling the focused attentions of sword and scepter ghost, dodging the whistling blade of the sword-slinger and parrying the mighty blows of the scepter-user, eventually goading the swordsman to slash right through the scepter-swinger's midsection, sending a spectacular spray of slime across the floor, which Mrs. Manbavaran narrowly avoided with a sweeping, grand dance move. She pitched in a little lightning, but it was clear he had it in the bag.

Right up until the ghost with the paper moon snuck up on him and caught his fist in the loop of the moon, wrapping the weapon around his arm. Sword and scepter pitched in a few cheap shots at the bound Hanbridge before paper moon forced his arm behind his back and then to the floor, tying his arms behind his back.

Mrs. Manbavaran made a disgusted sound and uncorked a potion from Lord knows where; before she could sling it the pistoleer ghost shot it out of her hands. She recoiled, a sharp hiss escaping her lips as the spilled potion ate through the floor. "A little help, Cavendish?" she said, staring daggers at Daryl.

"What? I'm pregnant! And my daughters are busy." She nodded vaguely in the direction of Maril, with the response teachers, maintaining the magic barrier that even now the horde of minor spirits were gnawing at, and Meril, with the repair witches trying to damage the warding spell to no immediate avail.

"You're not pregnant. I can see pregnancy--" She pulled back a lock of hair, and Daryl recoiled at the sight of her unhidden eye--"and you look like that panda that faked it. Now get out here, or--" Gun ghost shot her in the back of the head, interrupting her. She snarled and turned to face the ghost. "You little bitch, I'll--" And there came the fan again, putting a good fifteen rounds of energy into her, knocking her into the barrier, out of breath and struggling to shield herself against the barrage.

"Well, if you give me a minute..." Daryl said.

"Where... _is... my..._ " said gun ghost. A scintillating lance of plasma-jacketed protons smashed into its back, lighting its clothes on fire. "...mind?"

"Get away from her, you cunt!" Sucy said, throwing a potion bottle at the shocked ghost. Constanze, for she was the one doing the firing, shot the bottle mid-air and rained energized potion-matter onto the ghost. The potion splashed onto the ghost and expanded into a green foam that pinned the specter in place; Lotte unnecessarily leapfrogged over Constanze and slung a bolt at gun ghost's gun, obliterating it.

"One down!" Lotte said. "Hi, guys, we're here to hee-e-eeek!" Sword ghost swung their sword like a bat, Lotte dodging it by tripping over her own feet. Constanze stepped over her and swept her pistol at the sword ghost's legs, the blast stream knocking it to the ground. Lotte sang a sweet, high-pitched note and a very happy-looking length of ghostly chain tangled up Swordy right next to Paul Hanbridge.

The note keyed the nerves of Alma's horde of boogies; in a wave they turned away from the weakening shield wall and to the little Finnish witch.

"Buy me some time!" Lotte said. Paper moon ghost snapped a fresh moon at her. "I don't like the way he's--"

"--ein sof ohr! Spiralem flamma!" Finnelan and Badcock said, their wands (Badcock's still damp with slug juice) meeting at their tips. Four mighty bolts of red light streaked from where they met in, predictably, a spiraling pattern, impacting the paper moon ghost and blasting their outfit apart, leaving the gas mannequin form drifting helplessly in the air. "Sing, Jansson! Sing!" Finnelan said.

Lotte inhaled, closed her eyes, and sang a sweet lullaby. Gentle waves of mana reverberated through the theater. The horde of little spirits went from irritated to infuriated and rushed her.  
Constanze raised her pistol and took aim at the scepter and wand ghosts as they positioned themselves between the armies of the night and the witches. "We got this," Sucy said, shaking a bottle of poison by the neck like a bell at her enemies. "Come on, let's--" The spookhorde rushed straight through her and Constanze and at Lotte, leaving them both dripping with ectoplasm and obliterating Sucy's makeup. "Less got than anticip--woah, shit!" She lost her grip on the bottle and chased after it.

Finnelan and Badcock summoned a whirlwind to distract the horde of minor spirits, sweeping up a lot of debris and possums along with, but keeping it balanced on the razor edge of power versus containment was a hassle. "Little faster?!"

Scepter ghost took the opportunity to charge Sucy, swinging his scepter overhead, but Constanze shot it in the stomach with a capture stream. With a grunt of effort Cons hefted the ghost into the air and threw it at the wand spook. Wand ghost swatted scepter away with a force spell and stepped forward, aiming a curse at Sucy as she barely managed to cup the dropped poison in both her hands. Mrs. Manbavaran interrupted with a cascade of lightning bolts, shocking it in place.

"Thank you, mother," Sucy said.

"You're welcome," Mrs. Manbavaran said.

Neither of them met the other's gaze.

Constanze zapped scepter ghost when he tried to stand up again, and whistled. Her Stanbot ran out into the approximate center of the various disabled spooks, coming to a stop underneath the adrift sword ghost. "PLEASE! DO NOT LOOK! DIRECTLY! AT THE TRAP!" Stanbot said, biting down on the button on the switch in its mouth. The trap split open and a brilliant cone of light emitted from inside. The aimless specter was drawn into the trap like a puff of smoke into a vacuum cleaner. The little robot swung the trap down at paper moon ghost, sucking up it and the less-happy-now chain spirit alike and dazzling the shit out of every man, woman, and possum who tried to look at the trap in operation.

Straining to force the pistol to obey her and slipping around on her thoroguhly beslimed skirt, Constanze dragged the thrashing scepter ghost over the trap and disengaged the stream, the ghost sweeping into the trap ahead of the falling, burning clothes Stanbot deftly avoided. It finished its sweep by aiming the trap at the electrified wand ghost and at long last gun ghost, who managed a final plea before getting drawn into the trap, leaving behind a limp pile of clothes in a reef of foam. The trap's tripartate lid snapped shut and an occupancy light blinked on the machine's side, thick whisps of smoke rose from the seams in the lid.

And at last Lotte finished up her song, Alma's spooky army vanishing into the ether.

"Woo!" shouted Frank. He, the twins, and a groggy Marito were tied together with a paper moon and hanging upside-down from the victory table's victory platform. "Great job, guys!"

"My head hurts," Rajani said.

Finnelan and Badcock dropped their spell and panted. "Oh dear Mormo that was an event," Badcock said, feeling around for where she'd hidden a joint, to hell with who was watching.  
Finnelan looked over her shoulder. "We're not done yet," she said.

"No, siree," Lotte said.

"Good," Sucy said, after thoughtfully wiping her hands off on Paul Hanbridge, "I still need to use this."

Constanze deployed her wand's rifle housing, slotted her wand in, rolled out a length of Picatinny rail on tape underneath the barrel and on top of the proton pistol, attached the proton pistol to her rifle's new mount, and took her position. The five of them had instinctively lined up like badasses do.

Diana had stopped casting her spell. The crimson symbol hung in the air in front of Akko like a neon replacement for the traditional Abandon All Hope sign. Diana Cavendish stepped to the edge of the stage, expression blank, hands clasped in front of her, wand balanced between her fingers in an impressive display of finger-strength. "The work is done," she said. "All that remains now is time. And time, like the poet said, is on my side." Barbara and a sheepish Joanna stood at her side.

After a moment, Diana said, "Ahem."

Amanda, Louis, and Hannah were seated around an intact table chunk playing a hand of poker. "'Hem what?" Amanda said.

Diana narrowed her eyes and Amanda was wracked with an inky wave of sorcery crawling through her veins. "Right, hem that! Pardon, sorry." Amanda whipped the table away and the rest of her ground-pounding team stood up, working the cricks out and what have you. "Okay, guys, time to beat the shit out of you. Constanze, I gotta let you know, we're besties, but I'm gonna pound you like a defenseless kitten in a--"

With a soft _pop_ , Diana's underlings disappeared.

* * *

"...il ne devrait pas y avoir d'esclaves dans le Terres des Terres! _Libération_!"

Jasminka and Kimberly spoke the final word of the spell along with Chariot, and the cursed spikes pulled free of her victim's foreheads and collected into a thorny metal mass in Chariot's outstretched hand.

Amanda jolted awake first. "Oh sweet Jesus what was that about?" she said, rubbing her head and checking for resin and gigantic tits with such vigor that she was soon spinning rapidly in place. You know, lack of gravity and all.

"Why did I have all those breasts?!" Louis said.

"You were Yibb-Tstll," Joanna said. "Like Amanda was Bast and--do you know your witch gods, mister?"

"Besides the Devil? No!" Louis said.

"Hey, we don't--" Wangari said, before getting interrupted by a massive hug from Joanna and Kimberly, knocking the wind out of her. "...hah, I'll allow it," she said, hugging them back, slightly hesitantly in Joanna's still-sticky case.

"...so what was that about my brother?" Hannah said.

Barbara sighed. "Can't we talk this later?"

"Fine, but only because--"

Chariot was going to make an inspirational speech, but the sound of a dire ass-kicking interrupted her.

"Damn, who's dying out there?" Barbara said.

* * *

Diana fumed in silent fury.

"You can stand down now, Diana," Finnelan said. "Whatever is forcing your hand, we can get it out of you and get this whole debacle wrapped up. Alright?"

"Who says my hand is being forced?" Diana said.

"Well, for one," Lotte said, "you're a very nice young woman, so something like this is very much out of your--"

Diana pointed her wand and from just behind her a flexible glob of amorphous flesh lashed out at Lotte, who threw herself to the floor to avoid it. The tentacle rebounded off the floor and smashed straight through the shield keeping the civilians safe, splashing at last against the barrier Diana had erected.

Annabel dared look up at the twitching meat column just above her head. "meep," she said, and sat down.

"Holy shi--" Sucy said, but Diana was already leaping off the tentacle, a pair of swords formed of melting glass flashing in her hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been an exceptionally rough patch of time for me. Hopefully this is coherent, though!


	10. Dancing in the Doomlight

Sucy raised her arm, and Diana's blades smashed against her sleeveless arms, raining fluid glass across her hair and shoulder. "--iiiiEEEOOW!" said Sucy. "HOLY SHIT OW OW OW" She stumbled off, hair hissing and sputtering.

Finny and Badcock, the next in line, fired off stunning spells; Diana did the splits, ducking under and swinging her wands in a wide arc, catching them both in their brittle middle-aged knees and sending them tripping onto their own asses. Constanze grit her teeth and shot a force spell at her, sending Diana flying. The tentacle caught and righted her while spraying tentacle-ettes at Lotte (who ran), Cons (who fired back with the proton pistol on blast, scorching the tentacle-ette to ash), Ms. Manbavaran (who flung a potion at her attacker, missed, and soon felt the slippery beast slip its way around her throat), and Mrs. Jansson (who grabbed it out of midair and immediately wondered what made her do that).

Diana climbed to the top of the tentacle anchored to the barrier spell and took aim with both wands at the civilians and magic civilians. "Breathe deep," she said, and invoked the Black Blood of Yibb-Tstll.

"Oh," Headmistress Holbrooke said, looking up at impending doom.

"Mother," whispered Annabel, clutching the dead possum to her chest.

Maril and Meril clamped onto Daryl, to her consternation.

Diana invoked the first two syllables of the name of the Black Blood, gathering a cloud of black, musty flakes around her wands, before a generic energy bolt struck her in the halo of possum skulls. The sudden shock knocked her out of her spellcasting reverie, the flakes of choking blood falling in a limp heap directly on Daryl and her offspring. "Who dares?!" Diana said, turning to face her six.

Chariot kept her wand trained on Diana. "Diana, your black magic kick ends here," she said. She'd stripped to her battle suit in an effort to recoup some dignity for the final confrontation, and also Wangari, Hannah, Barbara, and Amanda were hurling spells at Diana. Diana cartwheeled to the side, but more magic flew at her from Sucy (reddened but better) and Constanze. The tentacle bucked, trying to carry Diana away from the barrage of spells.

"Charlotte, if you could...?" Mrs. Jansson said, and Lotte obliged with an ice spell to freeze the tentacle in her hands. She snapped it over her knee and threw the halves to the ground, shattering it. "Thank you, _hämähäkki_."

"Sure thing, mom," Lotte said, giving her a hug. "Now get dad un-big while--oh, Mrs. Manbavaran looks like she could use help! Pardon!" She hiked over to the suffering Mrs. Manbavaran, who perhaps was not suffering as much as she should in spite of getting strangled.

"This--won't--stop--me--" Diana said, before Constanze's proton stream wrapped around her. "Nnngh!!" With effort, Cons yanked Diana off the tentacle, which flopped around aimlessly without her directing it.

"Dude!" Amanda said, "Cons, is that safe?"

Constanze made a noncommital noise and smashed Diana into the ground.

* * *

 

"Well, that looks painful," Louis said from the safety of the stage. The remaining possums had fled for the stage as well, giving him, Jasminka, and Joanna a nice, warm carpet of scared ghost-faced monsters around their ankles. "Any progress with the red thing?"

Jasminka plinked at the glowing red insignia with dispell magic. "Nope. It's countin' down still!" There were tally marks glowing outside the now-completed Sign, ticking down. They had around a minute before whatever was going to happen happened. Akko was still unconscious--hopefully sedated and not spending a scary amount of time knocked out.  
Joanna shot a force spell at the cross, wiggling it in its magic orbit. "Maybe if we move Akko out the way, we can figure out the symbol later!"

Jasminka dug a wooden flute from her person and began to play the traditional Russian lullabye "Traffic in Moscow." Dozens of rounded black ears pricked up.

* * *

 

After a little more smashing, Constanze held Diana up in midair, taking aim with her wand-rifle. A little time suspended in the proton stream's grasp had lit Diana's clothes and hair on just a little fire, wards she had in place flickering and guttering as charged particles struggled to eat their way through.

"Oh, I get it," Sucy said. "Holding her in place for us! Good tactics. Good call."

"Form up!" Finnelan said. "We're putting all our juice in a Luna Lana spell!"

"Wait," Lotte said. "Couldn't that kill her?"

"If it's not enough, it'll barely tickle."

"I feel there has to be a middle ground here, teach," Wangari said.

"Well, if you have any suggestions--" Badcock said, as Diana shrieked, carrying with it a magic charge that burst the stream entangling her. She stuck the three-point superhero landing. "--please suggest them now! Ein sof ur--" She held her wand out, and Diana traced her fingers in the air.

"Oh hey," Wangari said, "it's the OWW MY FREAKIN' EYES--"  
Diana traced the Red Sign of Shudde M'ell in the air. Not the same Red Sign she'd been using, just to make this nice and complicated, a totally different red sign that attacks the bodies and minds of all who are in its range. Like, say, the good dozen or so witches surrounding her.

"Dammit," Sucy said, "why are we so slow on the draw today?!"

Chariot grit her teeth and commanded her legs to push her forward. Her head felt like it was in the grips of a giant tuning fork, her vision blurry and her brain aching, but time was running out.

Cons could've said something about how everyone was looking at stuff they shouldn't be looking at today, but then again, she'd looked right into the spell, so that would've been hypocritical.

* * *

 

The stage was just out of the range of the spell. "Jazzy, I trust you!" Joanna said, taking aim at Diana.

Jasminka built her song to a high note, and the mighty wave of possums each standing on the other's shoulders crashed down on the cross, their combined Possumight shoving it out of alignment and sending it crashing to the ground--tilting it more this way (indicates) so it would land flat on its back relative to Akko. The wave held itself in place triumphantly before the Red Sign's countdown completed and a myriad of glowing crimson spikes thrust into the cloud of possums.

Jasminka tooted a sharp note in shock, throwing off Joanna's aim such that her counterspell went wide over Diana's head. "My babies! _No_!"

The cloud dissipated, possums tumbling to the stage, the living cradling the dead and wounded. A black void briefly flashed in the core of the Sign, but on such meager feed it could not sustain itself. The Sign sputtered and died.

While the cloud was a hotbed of hissing and ass-screaming, a specific voice rose above the cacophony. Jasminka rushed the cloud and lifted that specific possum from the pile. "Yes?" she said. "I'm here. ... Oh? Ohh. Alright... I trust you."

* * *

 

Diana held the spell over her head. "Suffer," she said. The spell bit into her own flesh, its energies bleeding into her arms, her head pulsing with agony. Her makeup smeared with sweat and streaks of tears. "Suffer in my name as I have suffered in my name."

Chariot swung her wand, projecting a lenght of magic energy as a mighty blade. "We're done suffering today," she said, and with a burst of superhuman strength flung herself at the spell, plunging the blade into its depths. The two spells countered each other with a burst of light, knocking Chariot back and sending Diana almost to one knee. Chariot landed on her toes, cracked her knuckles, and moved in.

Diana turned to Chariot, the glass swords summoned once more. "Chariot," she said.

"Diana," Chariot said.

"CATCH!" Louis said, reeling back and pitching with all his strength. Not that he would have told anyone else in all the world, but he had a talent for American football that would put any blue-blooded Brit to shame. His projectile sailed through the air in a perfect arc; reflexively, Chariot caught it, and flung it at Diana's face.

Captain Christmas latched on to Diana's face.

"Oooooohh _Mama Mormo!_ " Diana sputtered, tripping over her own feet and landing on her ass. She pawed at the soft possum on her face, muttering terrified curses into his belly before finally liberating his weird little hands from her hair and holding him out at arm's length. "No, no, no, no, don't do this to me--"  
Captain Christmas spat a little pill into Diana's open mouth, which she swallowed reflexively.

"... _ulp_..." Diana said. She set the possum down and tried to crawl away from it. The most profoundly awful taste haunted her tongue. "...help... someone... please..." she said.

"The hell was that...?" Chariot said.

"Possum Fever pill!" Jasminka shouted as the Stage Crew--plus Andrew, still in his triage bubble, kept safe under the stage--were carried off the stage and to the rest of the team via possum cloud. "Are you okay, sweet baby?" She hopped free of the possum-mass and ran to scoop up Captain Christmas. Captain Christmas hissed at her. "Thank you! That was so brave."

"So, uh..." Sucy said. "Is that it?" Diana was convulsing on the ground, foaming at the mouth.

"Oh, right! It's been a minute since she got bitten," Jasminka said. "Or so I'd bet. The longer you wait the worse the pill feels. And if she's been bit long enough, then--"

With a mighty "HORK!" Diana coughed up an entire possum.

The sight of it drew a collective gasp from the audience. It was two shades of red, a darker one for its body and a paler, near-pink shade for its head. Its goofy fangs came to fine points. It wore a small pair of plastic horns just behind its ebony ears, and a small vinyl cape tied around its neck. A plastic pitchfork lay nearby.

Diana sat upright, panting and shivering. "I... I'm alive...?"

Wangari took a picture of the devil possum, framing it so that Diana getting a couple dozen wands pointed at her--including from the teachers abandoning the whole "take out the shield" thing. "For a few minutes," Wan-Wan said.

"Do you remember the last day and a half?" Chariot said. If I said she wasn't pointing her wand at Diana too, I'd be lyin'.

"...yes," Diana said. "I do."

"Ooh ho ho ho, you're in trouble, bitch," Lukic said from the crowd.

"Word!" Nelson said, dragging herself to her feet.

"...Why did you do it?" Chariot said.

The devil possum inched towards Diana. Constanze picked it up by the scruff with a soft grunt.

Diana looked around at the dozens of people ready to give her a good blasting--teachers, guests, her friends.

And stepping awkwardly out of the horde of possums, Akko. "I'm up!" she said. "I'm... I'm up! What'd I miss? Oh, hey, Diana! Did you get cured? You doin' good? What's up?"

"We asked a question already," Sucy said, "don't distract her. Go on, Diana, what's with the ghosts and imps and that fat bitch and the, the, whatever the hell that mess was on stage?"

Akko stumbled towards Diana and knelt besides her. "Go on. It's okay."

Diana took a deep breath and said, "I did it because I want to kill myself."

The atmosphere sucked out of the room.

Silently, Akko pulled Diana into a hug. Diana sobbed into Akko's shoulder, her body wracked with emotion.

Not long after, Daryl and Maril and Meril joined in, the latter two not a little awkwardly. "Oh, Diana..." Daryl said, softly. "Your mother, wherever she is... even after a little rough patch like this... she'd be so proud of who you became. She knew you were destined for greatness. And, well, I can bet it's been a rough day, but we all have rough days..."

"...destined..." Diana said.

"What's wrong?" Akko said. "What's so scary about destiny?"

Here and now the words fell from her lips. "Who was my father?" Diana said.

Daryl tilted her head this way and that. "Father, father..."

"It was Timothy Banks," Maril said. "The librarian and magic enthusiast from Shropshire. Nice enough, but he never really clicked with your mother, well, after the ceremony anyway, so they went their separate ways."

"...is... is that it?"

"Yes, it is." Daryl furrowed her brow. "Is that bad?"

"I thought... I've been... these dreams..."

"Oh, you're hyperventilating..." Akko said. "Breathe with me, okay? In four, hold three, out seven. Hold three..."

"I just--I--I--"

Daryl snapped a bar of Xanax in half and fit it in Diana's mouth. Again, reflexively, she gulped. "Cool down, kitten. Okay, uh..." She looked around. "Can someone call the hospital or something?"

"Hospital?" Andrew said from inside the triage bubble.

"Son?" Paul Hanbridge said. "Something about... I could use a hospital visit right now."

Andrew dug into his pocket, pulled out the emergency switch, and hit the button. A bright blue light emanated from it, scanning around the room. "MEDICAL EMERGENCY DETECTED. RAPE WHISTLE DISABLED. CALLING..."

The roof exploded and several paramedics descended on a wire into the room. Or they would if not for the shield. One of them knocked and said something inaudible over the distance.  
Diana felt for her wand and ended her array of spells. A cold breeze emanated as a dozen or so black magic spells unbound, and with a sharp crack the barrier spell ended. The paramedics landed, and with some help from Diana's family doling out some much-needed healing spells, everyone with a medical complaint (Akko, Diana, Andrew, Paul, and of course Daryl and Maril and Meril, who refused to let Diana out of their sight until the whole suicidal thoughts business was over) were airlifted out and into the night.

After a few moments it was clear that the busy part of the night was done.

"So, uh..." Finnelan said, scratching her head. "That's something else to spend money on. And the bachelor auction appears to be..."

"Little help here?!" Frank shouted.

"Oh, right." Finnelan shot the paper moon coccoon, that whole crew's fall arrested by a puddle of helpful possums.

"Anyhow, so, uh. Does anybody have any idea what we can do to get some money from you people? Shit that was not the best way to say that."

"It's been a long day," Badcock said, patting Finnelan's back.

"Pass the hat around...?" Joanna said.

"Man, buncha rich bastards like them, they ain't gonna pass the hat around," Wangari said. "We need to give them a show. Like, a really, really eye-grabbing show that will loosen their wallet hinges like we sprayed 'em with WD-40."

"Do any wallets have hinges?" Joanna said.

"Probably! I'll look it up when we have time!"

Mrs. Manbavaran stood up and cleared her throat. "Seeing as how my prospective date has taken his leave, I have a proposal. I will get on that stage, and the more money you people give to Luna Nova, the fewer clothes I will wear."

"We can't seriously--" Holbrooke said, before the crowd of rich visitors cheered at ear-piercing decibels. "--striptease it is! Please give us, ah, fifteen minutes to get ready! Students under 18, please leave the theater!" And so the grand exodus of the sub-18s began.

"You're dancing too, sweetie," Mrs. Manbavaran said, grabbing Chariot by the shoulder on her way to the stage.

"Pardon?" Chariot said. "It's--excuse me, I don't know if--"

"Shut up and enjoy it," Manbavaran said.

Sucy stretched. "Well, that was fun, but I think I'm gonna call it a night, so I don't have to see my mom get naked."

"Au contraire," Wangari said, putting her arm around Sucy's shoulder. "Someone has to do music. Why trust it to some jukebox that had a curse on it recently? Plus..." She leaned in and whispered a secret.

"Oh... oooh. Okay. Sure. Family affair it is.  Joanna!  Bass!  Kimberly!  Keytar!   Constanze, the drums! You're 18, right?"

Constanze pulled on a blindfold and gave a thumbs up.

"That works too!"

On the way past Jasminka, Constanze tossed the devil possum to Jasminka with a soft noise.

"Right... right." Jazzy pet the devil possum, mindful of the teeth. "Amanda, I could use the help..."

"Yeah, yeah," Amanda said. "Come on, let's get this done."

"Should--should I help?" Lotte said.

"Hang on," Sucy said. "Hey there, guys."

"So you know, I'm very dizzy," Rajani said.

"Take this, you'll feel better," Sucy said, handing her a potion of cure light wounds. "So, the dates."

"Here you go," Rajani said, handing Frank off to her.

"Oh, hello?" Frank said.

"Here you go," Sucy said, handing him off to Lotte.

"...hello!" Lotte said, blushing a little.

"I believe my date's taken her leave," Marito said. Not far away, a teacher was pushing Alma away with a broom. "Don't suppose one of you is open for tonight?"

"I happen to be," Wangari said, taking him in arm. "But more importantly, so is my buddy. There you go!" She handed him off, with some hesitation, to Lotte.

"Uhm!" Lotte said.

"Er," Frank said.

"Then it's a date." Marito brought their faces in close and kissed both of them at the same time. "Come now, the night is young."

"Okay!" Lotte and Frank said at once.

"Lucky bitch," muttered Wangari.

"She needs it more than we do," Sucy said.

"Keep tellin' ourselves that..."

* * *

Outside on the Luna Nova pitch, Jasminka set the devil possum on a patch of grass and walked a few paces away.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You're beautiful, and I love you, but... you're too dangerous to keep alive."

The devil possum hissed at her.

Amanda plugged her ears.

"It's the only way." Jasminka took aim. She muttered an ear-protection spell and lined up her sights. "Goodbye."

She squeezed the triggers, and the two Javelin missile launchers punted their warheads into the air. They looped around in the air a few times each and smashed into the possum from opposite directions. A second sun dawned.

Jasminka threw aside the launchers, sniffling.

"Come on," Amanda said, giving her a hug. "Let's watch Sucy's mom show her titties. That'd make you feel better, yeah?"

"Y-yeah. She has big titties."

"The biggest. It's crazy. Oh, thanks for the guns, guys!" Amanda said.

They walked past the myriad of helicopter pilots--some military, some police, the medical ones having taken their leave--lounging on the Luna Nova lawn, playing a hearty game of poker at one of the larger picnic tables. They were hired for the night and they were gonna be here the night, dammit.


	11. Die Day, I'm In Love

"Testing, two, three!" Wangari said, speaking into her mic. "No feedback, comin' in clear, excellent." She switched it off. "Alright, we're just about ready." Once the janitorial fairies cleared away the dead tentacle glob and swept up a little, the guests of Luna Nova--ahem, the suckers whom they were about to squeeze money out of--were packed tight against the cordon between the stage and where the kitchen goblins had requested a little room be made for refreshments. The goblin-chef-in-chief sat on the lid of a gigantic ramekin, intently smoking a cigarillo and inspecting a knife longer than he was tall.

"Wait yer goddamn turns," he said.

Was he under the impression they were lining up for him? Ah, let 'em dream.

"Want we should gussy up, boss?" Kimberly repeated a little more loudly and closer to Wan-Wan.

"Oh! Nah, we're not the ones getting looked at. Hell, check this out." She unbuttoned her blouse and threw it behind her, leaving herself in just her Fight-Tite Millerform(tm) Sports Bra with Elastoband Technology(r). The crowd did not noticably pop. She turned to face her underlings. "See? Nobody's lookin'."

"I'm looking, boss," Joanna said, staring directly at Wan-Wan's chest.

"Thanks, babe! You're a rose among thorns."

"You're welcome," Jo-Jo said, contentedly.

Sucy slithered on-stage. "And now at last my clothes are back," Sucy said, "and they smell like the ocean. So that's nice." She tugged her collar over her nose and took a whiff. "Now we just have to wait for that huge slut and Chariot to get out here."

"...is she?" Wangari said. "Like, do you know?"

"She tries," Sucy said.

Sucy's mom and Chariot appeared in a cyanide-scented cloud of perfume that wafted onto the crowd. Chariot had finally been purged of Tindalos-hound protoplasm by grace of a high-pressure shower. She was soaking wet, her face half-hidden by her blazing crimson locks. "Oh," she said. "Pardon, I think I need to..."

The crowd popped explosively and tossed an early round of cash money bills into the air. A donation-collection spell apparated the money into a convenient bucket secured between the headmistress's legs. She and the other faculty who were plentifully exhausted by lengthy rituals watched contently and let the two hotties do the hard stuff.

"I think it's already begun," Mrs. Manbavaran said, approaching the edge of the stage. "Audient void, are you ready for a display of womanly flesh the likes of which even your most debased dreams cannot begin to approach?"

A helpful meter appeared, measuring how much money had fattened the Luna Nova coffers and thus maximum unclothedness of the dancers present. The meter was ticking steadily upwards. And of course the crowd was cheering, man and woman and at least one cyclope alike.

"I'm, uh... this is new to me..." Chariot said.

Mrs. Manbavaran hip-checked her to the side. "Then allow me. Child of mine, play me a song."

"Certainly, mother dearest," Sucy said. "Chef's choice!"

"Call it terribly on-the-nose," the goblin said, biting into his fingernail with the audibly-sharp edge of his giant knife, "but I kindly request... 'Pour Some Sugar On Me.' You know that one."

"I do, I do."

Wangari laughed nervously. "Ain't we tempting fate with that a little?" she said sotto voce.

"Chef's choice," Mrs. Manbavaran said.

"Damn, she's got ears," Wangari said, signalling Cons. Cons hammered out the drumline and the witch-band kicked the song into gear. Mrs. Manbavaran ran her pinkie fingernail down her dress from her bustline to just below her crotch; with a soft shrug, her dress fell apart and pooled at her knees, leaving her clad in lingerie: a strapless black lace bra and waist-high pantyhose each with floral embellishments. The cheering nearly drowned out the music and as Sucy's mom danced in a sinuous rhythm the donations went from a trickle to a pour.

* * *

Annabel cracked open a fresh can of Monster Energy Touring Water and took a long swig. "Today has had its ups and downs."

"You're telling me!" Lotte said, cuddling up between Frank and Marito. "But I think it's finally turned out alright."

"That may have been plain as meals go," Marito said, "but I hope I cooked with enough passion to make it memorable nonetheless."

Marito declined asking for any of the dating packages in favor of wandering out into the Forbidden Forest, catching a wild peacock, braising it with wild herbs (harvested during the hunt) and barding it with lardons (cut and processed from a wild boar he'd also caught during the hunt) and roasting it over mystic flames so they wouldn't have to wait eight hours for their dinner. The rest of the boar he roasted on the side and offered to any takers, a real class act if we're being honest.

Post-dinner, the four of them sat on a long bench, Lotte between her male companions, Annabel off to the side a couple inches, admiring the Luna Nova lawn full of under-18 students, soldiers, scorpions, and just a couple of possums enjoying some roast boar around an assortment of crackling barrel-fires the assorted military folk built to stave off the cold.

"Don't be modest," Frank said, "that was the finest peacock I've eaten yet."

"I'll have to hire you as a chef the next time I'm in your neck of the woods," Annabel said. "What's your fee?"

Marito proffered a rate card. She snatched and gave it a quick read.

"Huh. Impressive." She tucked it in her dress.

"The stars are lovely tonight," Marito said. "The constellations are clear as paint on glass!"

"They are," Lotte said.

"M-hm," Frank said.

"To the lovemaking, then?" Marito said.

"Yes please!" Lotte said.

"Wait," Frank said. "Can I take a minute to... I dunno... gather my thoughts?"

"Of course!" Marito said, helping both him and Lotte to their feet.

Frank inched over to Annabel. "Lady, got any advice?" he said in a shaky whisper. "I'm worried about, uh, my ability to perform. Especially compared to Marito."

"And your instinct is to ask me for advice."

"You're an authority figure!"

Annabel reached into her dress and flicked a red pill the size of his thumb at him. "Here. It's a magic pill I purchased on my journeys. You'll give twice as good as you get, guaranteed."

"Really?" Frank swallowed it with considerable difficulty. "Wish me luck," he said, and rejoined his dates.

Annabel's phone hummed. She typed a message to her private Discord server: "totally just gave the blond guy my intellifuck pill. hpoe he gets a good use out of it. *hope"

"are you just using him as a guinea pig???" StarTuckers#9923 said.

"no. probably" she typed. The server rated her comment with a good dozen Doubting Clock Tower emotes. "screw you (tongue out smiley)"

* * *

Diana awoke to the sound of her aunt reading from a magazine.

"--dollars, a stiff price, but fair for the service. Will you accept the charges, or try to haggle?"

"Haggle!" Akko said.

A sound of paper rustling. "The shopkeep takes offense. His head splits open, revealing a revolver hidden inside. Before you can draw your own gun you are shot down like a dog. Back to the last page..."

"Aw, come on, my REF is like 5!" Akko said.

"...what in the name..." Diana said.

"Oh, Diana, you're awake?!" Akko said.

"I think." Diana blinked. The world gradually resolved. She was in a hospital room, the walls a bleak, sterile white and gray, a mute TV in the corner showing the evening news. Her mother was reading from a multipath interactive fiction book, Box Store of the Stars, Akko seated across from her with a four-for-a-pound notebook and six-sided die in her lap. Her cousins were planked atop each other on a couple of chairs with a blanket thrown over them, a little puddle of drool pooling under their sleeping heads.

"Where are we?" Diana said.

"In the hospital at Blytonbury," Akko said. "Andrew and his dad are next door. His dad's gettin' pumped full of antientheogens! Oh, you were up a few minutes to drink some water like an hour ago but I think it was more like you were sleep-drinking 'cause you just sorta sat up and said 'water' and I gave you some water and you put your head back down and you fell asleep. You hungry? I mean, they said you looked like you hadn't eaten for a whole day so, you know..."

"I don't think I--" Her stomach snarled loud enough to make Meril stir briefly in her sleep. "Yes I am. Is there a menu?"

"I'll do you one better," Daryl said, whipping out a smartphone. "I know a sushi restaurant that's open this late and delivers to hospitals. Shall I order a spread?"

"Yes, please," Diana gasped.

Daryl dialed them up. "Hey there, Saito-kun. Yes, the usual room. Two of your Imperial sushi dreadnoughts... ah, make it three, direct one to the room on the left. Can't miss 'em, they have the handsome white boys in it. One may try to get you to worship the Hounds of Tindalos, just humor him." She took the phone from her ear. "How many bottles of sake?"

"I'm on Xanax and in a hospital, Daryl," Diana said.

"Just the three, then," Daryl said into the phone.

* * *

On the count of three, Chariot shredded her eufiber jumpsuit's bust and Mrs. Manbavaran doffed and threw aside her bra in one smooth motion. Chariot's sizeable and Mrs. Manbavaran's massive breasts blessed every pair of eyes in the room.

The donations went from the "show our tits" stretch goal and spiraled into the low six digits. A man tried to donate his wife. The roar of the crowd died down just a little as many men and a few women trailed off into awkward, satisfied noises.

From her throne of possums at the back of the crowd, Jasminka applauded. "Thank you," she said.

"Good God," Louis said. (He was here.)

"You're tellin' me, huh?" Amanda said.

They'd taken their good goddamn time getting to taking their tops off. By that point the band had burned through the entirety of "Pour Some Sugar On Me" and were doing the rock equivalent of jazz noodling. Wangari took a moment to sign "Your mama got her tits out!" to Sucy.

"I'm aware," Sucy signed back.

"Goddamn," Finnelan said. "Chariot's a young buck, but how in hell does Manbavaran Senior do it?"

"Black magic, probably," Badcock said before she could stop herself. "Oh, damn, way too soon..."

"Hell, it's fine," Nelson said. "Nobody died, right? And what's-her-face did the stuff Chariot said we should do, right? Get the books and all? That's what she wanted us to get, right?"

"You know," Finnelan said, "what bugs me is the Crimson King insignia. Why did she go with that of all things?"

"Well, it does look cool," Badcock said. She chuckled. "Remmeber at the start of our first year of teaching--that was in '04, right? The last Dark Tower book came out, we took a day off to read it, then we cooled our heels and had a big Crimson-King-themed shindig in the old theater?"

"I remember most of it," Finnelan said, a little smile on her face. "You nearly tripped on an old condom when I finished spraypainting the symbol on the wall."

"It was amazing," Badcock said. "And I don't think there were any bugs in that pile of mattresses after all, or I didn't remember having to magic them off after..."

"I zapped the beds first, remember?"

"Oh. Oh, now I do!"

The two continued to discuss their sexual exploits in detail as Mrs. Manbavaran slid to the front of the stage, gyrating her body in near-boneless ways. She muttered the words of an eldritch spell, blazing green lines of magic slicing through the air in loops and arcs as she invoked the name or names of Zharlloigor, Be They One Or Two. She was winging it, really. With all eyes on her she could have worked any number of truly gruesome spells to whatever effect she desired.

As she was thinking what she could cast, her daughter and her daughter's brown-skinned friend snuck up behind her, letting the tiny cake-dressed one's drum solo cover the sound of their approach. Once the chef goblin hopped out of sight and the aroma of a reasonably-perfect creme brulee wafted up through the air, the two whipped out their wands and cast a simple push spell.

"Eh?" she said, suddenly nudged a few feet off the stage and into the creme brulee. Perfectly-caramelized crust and golden sugar rained on the front row and the faerie short-order cooks.  The chef goblin, buried in his own masterwork, crawled forth from the glob of custard with his knife in his teeth and swore a lengthy Gaelic curse at the band.

"Oops," Sucy said, smirking. The music (or, as it was now, just Cons's drum solo) trailed off at last.  
"Wasn't that a wacky finish, huh, folks?" Wangari said, winking. "Thank you for stopping by and be sure to visit the gift shop!"

Mrs. Manbavaran stood up in the ramekin, covered head to toe in golden custard. "Dear me," she said, "I appear to have taken a tumble." She touched her plump lips with one finger and tilted her head, her hair shifting with a soft dripping sound. "I think I may need some help being cleaned... by whoever bids the highest on taking me home for the night."

"You heard the lady!" Headmistress Holbrooke shouted. "Bidding starts at... let's say 10,000 pounds!"

"100,000!" a particularly luxe-looking man said, raising a glistening onyx credit card over his head. The bidding war intensified from there.

"Well, I was hoping she'd be angrier," Sucy said. "Come on, let's go back to your room and watch porn."

"Sounds good to me!" Wangari said, throwing her discarded blouse across her shoulder. The two performed a _Predator_ flex-handshake. "Come on, girls! We got a party tonight!"

"Hell yeah," Kimberly said.

"Yes, m'am!" Joanna said.

Constanze held up a sign: "I'm going to check my workplace for excess opossums." A Stanbot picked her up and glided her towards an exit, being blindfolded still and all that.

"Wanna come with?" Sucy said, eying Chariot as her senses returned and she struggled to conceal herself, especially as Constanze passed her.

"No thank you," she said, blushing.

"We're eighteen, it's not--"

"I'm _not_ eighteen, and it's _extremely_ weird," she said through grit teeth. "Thank you for your help today, I'm going to go to bed."

"Suit yourself," Sucy said, taking another whiff of the inside of her collar.

* * *

The commons room was practically empty. The gentle crackle of the eternal chair fire was--

\--you know, the chair fire? A student back in '54 threw all the common room's notoriously uncomfortable chairs into a pile and cast an unknown smokeless-fire spell that has yet to relent or respond to dispels. Everyone knows that. Anyway--

The gentle crackle of the chair fire was the only soundtrack to Hannah and Barbara staring each other down.

"So we didn't get sex," Hannah said.

"The sex was implied when she stuck a nail in our heads," Barbara said, nodding. "And of course it was Amanda who got something up her asshole tonight."

"In that awful boy disguise she was in, right?" Hannah said. "That disgusting, deceitful boy disguise. I bet you didn't even get one sniff of her when she was dressed like a stupid boy."

"No," Barbara said, "I just watched her take a guest through the tradesman's entrance."

"You bitch," Hannah said.

The two paused as Lotte's screams of pleasure spiked in volume, echoing down the halls.

"That bitch," Hannah said.

"Agreed," Barbara said.

For the time being, everything else they could have said to each other about each other was suspended by their mutual hatred of Lotte. And in this fashion did Hannah and Barbara not kill each other for one more night.

"The wigs, tonight?" Hannah said.

"The wigs," Barbara said.

* * *

Near midnight, Diana stood on a walkway bridging the two halves of the hospital across the street. On most nights Blytonbury wasn't much to look at, its low, colorful buildings blanched by moonlight. Here and now, though, under a cloak of snow, the world was faintly luminous. What motion the town had at this late hour, in this weather, was dream-motion, half-aware and guided by the unconscious.

Like this: a post-dinner walk turned into a silent stare through the plexiglass, recycled hospital air a replacement for a stiff breeze at the back. Only ghosts had the run of the town at this hour, and that face looking back at her was a ghost's face wearing a painted symbol of Azathoth. (With a clean line breaking the circle. Had she done that while disenchanting herself?)  
She wasn't alone, though for a few moments gazing on the silent city, she had felt so. Akko was nearby, as was an orderly, both watching her watch the sleeping streets.

"Are you alright?" Akko said at last.

"I think," Diana said.

"That's an 'I-think' for yes?"

Diana smiled at her. "I can go back to my room if you'd like."

"If that's what you'd like!" Akko said.

"I think I'd like a few more minutes out here," Diana said.

Akko stepped closer. "Can I, uh..."

"Speak up, I can take it."

"Can I kiss you?"

Diana turned to Akko, arms wide, and Akko hopped onto her, legs wrapped around her hips, arms behind her neck, mouth on her mouth. Diana rested her back against the guardrails and surrendered to Akko's love attack. The moment was imperfect at best; Akko smelled of dust and sweat, Diana of nameless, otherworldly things. Akko's mouth tasted like the cheap cola she'd downed to keep awake and attentive. Diana lacked the strength to keep Akko attached; soon she lowered her to the ground, pinned her against the wall, and kissed her neck.  
Now the strength left Akko's legs and she slid down the wall, Diana with her, and both exhausted they lay against the wall, feeling each others' heartbeats through their chest.

"I love you," Akko said. "Please don't scare me like that ever again."

"I promise I won't," Diana said.

"And promise you'll bring this up with your therapist. Okay?"

"I will."

The two were silent a long moment. A car passed under the bridge, the rush of wind in its wake faint but louder than the air conditioning.

"I feel better now," Diana said. "More..."

"Like you?"

"...it was me all the time," Diana said. "Not a part of me I like to think about. But it was a part of me, acting out, trying to..." She struggled for the right phrase. "It's like... standing in front of a firing squad. All of them aiming at me, fingers on their triggers, and it's going to happen, and it's going to hurt... and I was doing everything I could to get them to shoot. Because I deserved it."

Akko hugged her. "You don't."

"Say it again..."

"Diana Cavendish, you're great. You had a bad fever and an anxiety attack and a bunch of evil books, but we're all alright, we got you before anything really bad happened. I promise. You're good. You're a good person who had a bad day. And we all have bad days." Akko kissed her tear-streaked cheeks. "And even if you turned out to be a monster girl, that wouldn't make you any less wonderful."

"Let's... let's put that out of our heads for now."

"Alright. Spooky Diana Thoughts are taking a vacation."

"Thank you. After today, I've decided I don't want my fangs too long."

A long silence.

"You're imagining something, aren't you," Diana said.

"Vampire Diana," Akko said.

Diana giggled. "Okay, I'll give you that one."

Akko's eyes widened.

"...maybe tomorrow night."

Akko thrummed with excitement.

The orderly cleared his throat. "Can I look now? I should have been but I felt kind of awkward... sure hope you're both intact..."

* * *

"Thank you for the sex!" Lotte said, waving off her dates.

Marito finished recording the details of the encounter in a little moleskine notebook. "Thank you for a most enjoyable experience!" he said.

Frank cradled his head in his hand. "Sorry about the mid-sex freakout. I just got started on vacuum state mathematics and the implications just kinda, well, you saw."

"It's fine~" Lotte said. "And sorry about the, uh..."

"You just wanted a witness to your big moment," Marito said, winking at the Aurora standees that had watched them screw on Sucy's bed.

"Seriously though I can't stop thinking about quantum physics and I'm still horny and it's bothering me" Frank said in an overly long gasp.

"Follow me!" Marito said, taking him by the shoulder. "We'll find a nice quiet bathroom to work all that out in."

"Living the dream," Frank said, letting Marito lead him away.

Lotte watched them saunter down the hallway before closing the door, taking a deep breath, and sighing in relief. She almost made it to the first step of the bunkbed before she heard a knock at the door. She adjusted the fit of her bathrobe, double-defogged her glasses, and answered. "Hello?"

"Package for ya, m'am," a deliveryman said, holding out a clipboard with receipt attached. Behind him was an enormous, sticker-covered box.

Lotte hiccuped. "Oh! Oh, right." She signed and dragged the box inside, laying it on the ground and using a basic cutting spell to defeat the tape. Nested in a long wreathe of air-filled bags was the plush Aurora doll she commissioned not quite 24 hours ago.

Lotte lifted the doll out of the box with just a little effort. She sat on Akko's bed, the doll at her side. It was a quality doll, she had to admit. That little smile. That real dress. Those soulful eyes. The cape-like hair. It was definitely worth the four digits she had shelled out just for the quality and speed of the construction. These were the thoughts she tried to occupy her brain

with.  
She took the doll's hand. She felt her wedding band dig into her skin. "Lilou," she said to the audient void, "I know I promised that I'd love again... and, well, I had a lot of fun toda... just now. But I also promised I'd love you forever." She squeezed the soft plush hand. "So, this isn't a replacement for you being here... and it's not a replacement for whoever I may date or marry in the future... but when I miss you a lot, I think I'd feel better with this avatar of you here. Okay?"

She held her breath.

"I hope that's a yes. Send me a sign if that's a no."

After several seconds waiting for a no, Lotte brought the doll into a big hug.

After several more seconds waiting for a louder no, Lotte's hand slipped up the doll's skirt.

* * *

"Yes, excellent!" Marito said, panting. "Like this!"

"Elementary physics seems so quaint!" Frank said while penetrating Marito. "I knew this was the ideal angle for penetration since the day I was born!"

"Keep it up, man!" Amanda said. "It looks really cool!"

"Could you deepen your voice a bit?" Louis said while penetrating Amanda who was once again sporting the boy look. "I think that'd make it better for me."

"Sure thing, handsome," Amanda said, voice huskier than before.

Amaranth sighed. "This is such a quiet bathroom most nights. Now that it's popular it's really gone to the dogs."

"Should we head back to me and my roomies' room, hon?" Sal said.

"No, as long as we're here we're classing the place up."

"Any of you want a mid-sex pie?" Jasminka said, lifting up the first of many pies she had baked.

Alma kept trying to shriek her catchphrase from within her duct tape coccoon upside down on the wall of the ladies' bathroom, which is where all this was happening. The sex and pies were interrupted by the sound of Lotte screaming in even more pleasure than before.

"My God," Louis said. "What master sex-haver could possibly be doing that to her?"

* * *

The next day arrived at last.

Amanda took her daily jog around Luna Nova and stumbled to a halt when she witnessed Jasminka pushing an enormous crate towards the ground-based leyline terminal. "Hey! Hey, Jasna, what the hell's going on here?"

"Oh, hello!" Jasminka said, resting against the crate. "I came to a realization last night, is all."

"What kind of realization?" Amanda said, reaching for her wand subconsciously.

"If I can't keep my babies safe in Luna Nova," she said, stroking the side of the crate, "then I shouldn't keep them here. I cast a spell on the crate that should teleport it someplace where they'll all be happy. I jsut need to push it through 'cause if I use any magic to actually put it in the terminal things could get, ah, weird."

Amanda thought that over. "Okay, y'know, that's pretty mature, Jazzy. Tell you what, I'll help you push that bast... I mean those lil' guys on through. Did you say your goodbyes?"

"Yeah," Jasminka said, wiping a single tear from her cheek. "They know I love them. And they know why I have to do it. I've buried or eaten enough of their brothers and sisters last night."

"There, there," Amanda said, patting her back. "Let's get these guys where they gotta go."

Together, they shoved the crate through the leyline terminal; it vanished into the depths of the swirling vortex. A few moments later, Diana and Akko flew through just above their heads,

Diana taking the lead on a broom.

"Oh, hey!" Amanda said, waving. "You guys feeling better?"

"I am, thank you," Diana said, hovering above them. "I'm sorry about abducting you."

"Eh, I got laid, it worked out," Amanda said, gesturing vaguely.

"I'm glad to hear that," Diana said. "I have a long road ahead, but... I think tonight I'll be just fine. After I check in on everyone I hurt last night, anyway."

"Redemption que-e-e-e-st!" Akko said.

"Have a good time!" Jasminka said. "And don't work too hard! It's Sunday, after all."

"Catch you, Jazz," Amanda said, resuming her hike.

"See you later." Jasminka waited for Amanda to vanish from sight before pulling a new whistle from inside her uniform. Possums were too soft, too gentle for the hostile grounds of Luna Nova. But there was something else both adorable and delicious that could hack it in this far territory. Solemnly, she played the traditional Russian lullabye "The Lovesick Blues of a Young Proletariat."

Through the leyline terminal emerged a dozen goliath bird-eating spiders, their sonorous hissing filling the air with nature's music.

"Come on, guys," Jasminka said, letting them all climb onto her. "Let's get you fed and make some babies."

* * *

Far, far away, Diana Cavendish, the Rose of Savathun, felt the last threads of probability slip away. This Atsuko was lost to her forever.

She'd come so close. Damn them all. Damn all those little souls--

The Infinite Forest shifted. Old simulations perished and new ones began. She had to move. There would be other times to steal an Atsuko for herself. Always other times, as long as she could appease her divine patron, and as long as there were new branches of the Infinite Forest.

* * *

At long last, the box opened, and the possums spilled out. Cool water lapped at their bellies. The sun was low on the horizon, casting a crimson glow across the dozens and dozens of Jasminka's pets. Lost, fumbling, they cried out for a leader.

On a stone in the spring, a leader came. He addressed the congregation and spoke: "HHHRRRRRGKK!!!"

The possums stood still, as they are known to do, but only some of them played dead in fear. All knew at once that the Trash King had come at last, as the prophecy foretold.

On the bridge overlooking the gray, furry tide of possums stood two witnesses to the ascension.

"Ho. Lee. Crap," Mae Borowski said. "We're really earning the town name tonight."

Germ Warfare sniffled. "I knew he had it in 'em."

"Where did they come from?" Mae said. "And are they gonna get along with the rats?"

"I think possums eat rats," Germ said. "But I think rats eat possums, too. So maybe they'll balance out."

They would not.

RABIES THE POSSUM  
in  
**TRASH KING** _RABIES THE POSSUM_  
and his  
ARMIES OF THE NIGHT  
against the  
ANARCHIST RAT ARMIES OF POSSUM SPRINGS.  
or,  
JASMINKA CAUSES AN INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT  
probably not actually going to happen though

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thankya for readin'.


End file.
